


peas ss a. 
E184 .J5 M33 1924 
McCall, Samuel W. 1851-1923) 
Patriotism of the American 

Jew 











Patriotism of the 
American Jew 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https://archive.org/details/patriotismofamerOOmcca_0O 


M Y sympathies are with this bril- 
liant race. Centuries ago its nation- 
ality was destroyed in Palestine. It 
was dispersed over the face of the 
globe. The laws of almost all nations 


have discriminated against it; and 
yet it has shown such marvelous vi- 
tality that it has made for itself a 
proud place. 

Samuel W. McCall, House of Representatives, . 


on the abrogation of the Russian Treaty, 
December, rorr. 





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PATRIOTISM OF TH 
AMERICAN JEW 


ByR ee 


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SAMUEL WALKER McCaLt 


FORMER MEMBER OF CONGRESS, 
GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS, 
AUTHOR OF “THE BUSINESS OF CON- 
GRESS,” “THE LIBERTY OF CITI- 


ZENSHIP,” “THE LIFE OF THOMAS 
BRACKETT REED,” ETC. 


FOREWORD 
By 
CuHar tes W. ELiot 


PRESIDENT EMERITUS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY 


1924 


Plymouth Press, Inc. 
New York 


oe 


a 


ft 


Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1922, 
by The Plymouth Press, Inc., in the Office of the 
Librarian of Congress at Washington 


Copyright, 1924 


The Plymouth Press, Inc. 
New York, N. Y. 





All rights reserved 


Printed in U.S. A. 
By L. Middleditch Company, New York 


Preface 


N this contribution I have endeavored to give 
some estimate of the part played by the Jew in 
the development of our history and of the title 
he has established to all the rights of our citizen- 
ship. The references to remoter history form 
a necessary background, being essential in my 
opinion to an understanding of the danger in- 
volved in any departure from the American atti- 
tude, which has been not merely beneficial to our- 
selves but also to Europe. 

With us race prejudice against the Jew had 
been steadily disappearing and gave promise of 
becoming outgrown. But it has recently been re- 
vived by concerted propaganda undertaken both 
here and in Europe, the evil results of which are 
already apparent. Before a settled race preju- 
dice, constitutional guarantees are likely to shrink 
into mere paper rights, and its influence to be 
seen in the enactment and administration of law. 
Resistance to the formation of unjust and hostile 
opinion against a race becomes a public duty. 

I have chiefly concerned myself with the accu- 
sation that the Jew can be true to no country and 
is lacking in the capacity for patriotism. I have 
thought the best way of dealing with this and 
similar charges was to point to what individual 
Jews had done and from that to derive the char- 


7 


PREFACE 


acteristics applicable to the race as a whole. This 
process while more tedious is also more rational 
than to have recourse to the imagination and 
produce from it some race trait by which all its 
members are to be judged. When a fault is 
shown by a Jew it is because he is a Jew; in the 
case of other men the race is not mentioned. For 
example, if a Jew is charged with treason the 
indictment is made to lie against the whole race; 
but in the case of Benedict Arnold he is not im- 
puted to the English race, and certainly not as 
a representative. Not the least of the wrongs in- 
flicted upon the Jew is that he is judged as one 
of a mass and not as an individual. 

Much research has been necessary and I have 
been fortunate in my helpers. I especially ac- 
knowledge obligation to Mr. Eliot Lord for dis- 
criminating and painstaking service in the collec- 
tion of material, verification of statements, and 
sifting of authorities. I have been fortunate 
enough to have the proof read by so distinguished 
a scholar as Professor George F. Moore, of Har- 
vard, and his suggestions upon ecclesiastical and 
the remoter race history and the protocols have 
been of great value. I also heartily thank Presi- 
dent Charles W. Eliot for his liberal and inde- 
pendent foreword. 

SAMUEL W. McCay 


Foreword 
HE publication of Governor McCall’s book 


on the Patriotism of the American Jew is 
remarkably timely. A wave of anti-Semitic feel- 
ing has lately passed over the American people, 
due partly to the striking success of well-educated 
Jews in the professions and in large business ever 
since they attained to full American citizenship, 
and partly to the recent immigration of many 
Eastern European Jews into the United States. 
This not unnatural feeling has been stimulated 
by an active propaganda through the Press, pro- 
ceeding from ignorant and narrow-minded Chris- 
tians—a propaganda which has been amply sup- 
plied with money for printing and publishing 
purposes. 

Governor McCall prefaces his conclusive 
demonstration of the patriotism of the American 
Jew by some account of the immense services of 
the Jewish race to mankind. The careful reader 
of his earlier chapters will learn how the Jews 
maintained monotheism against idolatry; how 
their own “Lord of Hosts” guided them in their 
frequent wanderings and fought with them in 
battle against their enemies, and how their one 
Lord was the chief of the first republic ever cre- 
ated on this earth—the Republic of the Judges. 
He will see that the Hebrews, centuries before 


9 


10 FOREWORD 


the Christian era, created for themselves and 
transmitted to other races a superb literature in 
both prose and poetry, and later contributed to 
the preservation and transmission to modern 
times of the literatures of other nations, such as 
those of Greece, Rome, Arabia, and England. 

From the earliest times to the latest the He- 
brew race has been to a remarkable extent a liter- 
ate people, passing down from father to son and 
from generation to generation the art of reading 
and writing, the love of letters, and a strong be- 
lief in education. On down the centuries the 
synagogue has been a school for both children 
and adults, and the rabbis have been teachers of 
morality, social order, and domestic honor and 
love. 

The Hebrews have always been a migratory 
people, their migrations being induced alike by 
wars, famine, and persecution. At last a few 
million Jews have migrated to the United States 
of America, and there for the first time have 
found a country in which they hope and intend 
to stay. Although the American Jews are inter- 
ested in the new migration from other countries 
into Palestine and are prepared to support it liber- 
ally with money and engineering skill, it is hard 
to find an American Jew who proposes to migrate 
for life from the United States to Palestine. 

It is the main purpose of Governor McCall’s 


FOREWORD 11 


book to demonstrate beyond a question that the 
American Jew loves America, is grateful for his 
American refuge, and has been rendering great 
service to the United States ever since the Con- 
stitution was adopted—services military, naval, 
industrial, and financial—bearing voluntarily a 
part in public labors and burdens larger in pro- 
portion to their numbers than the immigrants of 
English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, or Scandinavian 
stock have borne. These are facts that the Chris- 
tian races inhabiting the United States today 
should carefully bear in mind, when they are 
urged to keep Jews out of the country, or to limit 
the opportunities of those already here. 

The moral teachings which have come down 
through the’ Jewish race have never been out- 
grown; and it 1s not probable that they ever will 
be. They cover the tenets on which alone human 
society can be securely founded—honor thy father 
and thy mother; thou shalt not kill, commit 
adultery, steal, bear false witness against thy 
neighbor, or covet anything that is thy neighbor’s. 
Here are the principles which guide mankind to 
sound family life, and to respect for the life, prop- 
erty, and rights of the neighbor. Jesus of Naza- 
reth gave a wider interpretation to the word 
neighbor and placed more emphasis on love in 
the two great commandments of the Mosaic Law, 
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine 


12 FOREWORD 


heart” (Deuteronomy VI, 5), “and thy neighbor 
as thyself” (Leviticus XIX, 18) ; but he expressly 
declared that “on these two commandments hang 
all the Law and the Prophets.” Moreover, Jesus 
was himself a Jew by birth, training, and experi- 
ence, and a kind of Jewish Prophet, a kind more 
radical or revolutionary than the Scribes and 
Pharisees could endure. 

There can be no doubt that the American Jews 
are trustworthy in regard to the theory of politi- 
cal liberty; but it may well be that some of the 
less educated among them will depart in some 
measure from the English-American method of 
developing civil liberty; because for many gener- 
ations they have had no experience of any sort 
of liberty—treligious, civil, social, or industrial. 
They promise, however, to be apt learners of the 
English-American practice of advancing gradu- 
ally through discussion and compromise towards 
safe freedom. 

It is a great satisfaction to all people who 
understand what invaluable contributions to re- 
ligious liberty have been made by the people and 
government of the United States to see that the 
anti-Semitic prejudice which is now manifesting 
itself in many parts of the world is not based on 
dislike of the Hebrew religion, but of some of 
the Jewish racial qualities. 

It is also satisfactory to all well-wishers for 


FOREWORD 13 


the human race that intermarriage between mem- 
bers of races that are not kindred is generally 
condemned by medical, sanitary, and eugenic 
authorities; so that the right policy in nations 
which include many different races is not fusion, 
or blending, or amalgamation, but separate paral- 
lel development of each race, acting in concord 
with the other races, but each preserving through 
many generations its own bodily and mental ad- 
vantages and historical characteristics. Here 
modern science is only corroborating the ancient 
Hebrew precept, “Thou shalt not let thy cattle 
gender with a diverse kind; thou shalt not sow 
thy field with mingled seed” (Leviticus XIX, 19). 

I hope that Governor McCall’s book will be 
widely read by thinking people in the United 
States, and particularly by those who are in the 
habit of trying to take an active part in the for- 
mation of a wise public opinion. 


CHARLES W, ELioT 









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Contents 


CHAPTER 


I DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 


II Tue Protocots: PoLiricAL FORGERIES 


III PERSECUTION’S PREFACE TO A NEw WORLD. 


TV WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 


V PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 


VI SvupporTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE . 


VII L&EADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM. 
VIII Meritinc WASHINGTON’s APPROBATION 
IX THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 


X Wortp WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE . 


XI SERVICE UNTRAMMELLED BY SECTARIANISM. 


XII PriIpDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP. 
XIII INTOLERANCE’sS BASIS oF FALSEHOOD 


XIV Risk To EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE . 


XV IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT . 


XVI UNIQUE IN THE WoRLD’S PHILANTHROPY 
XVII FoREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 
XVIII America’s NoBLEst History AT STAKE 


XIX Nationa, Duty UNMISTAKABLE 


APPENDIX SRNR EA oe OT RESO. CA IO Bh 


PAGE 
17 
28 
42 
=y) 
69 
83 
94 
103 
115 
131 
142 
148 
159 
167 
186 
209 
219 
233 
247 


200 


CHAPTER I 
DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 


AT the business of fomenting antagonism 
against a race, America is new and, therefore, 
awkward. And the beginning that has been de- 
liberately made here is of the crudest character. 

There is strength in our many-sided Ameri- 
can citizenship which makes it possible for our 
civilization to reflect the best qualities of so 
many races. Such a result, however, can only 
be brought about by co-operation. The division 
that would come from arousing race antago- 
nisms would serve to convert what should be a 
source of strength into a source of weakness. 
It is the statement of a very obvious thing to 
say that the intrusion of race issues into our 
social structure and political life will have the 
inevitable result of giving us less equal govern- 
ment. It will expose races to possible persecu- 
tion and increase the difficulty with which our 
friendly relations with foreign governments 
may be maintained. It will gravely endanger 
the very stability of the Nation. 

Racial antagonisms are likely enough to show 
themselves, even without stimulation, in condi- 
tions which are rich in material for their 
formation. There is danger enough that they 

17 


18 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


will spring up spontaneously and without special 
incitement on the part of anyone. The tendency 
to have our population divide itself into great 
cliques needs to be resisted, not encouraged, and 
when men deliberately set themselves to the 
task of arousing race hatred, the undertaking is 
by no means difficult in proportion to its wick- 
edness. With so much combustible material 
lying about us there may easily be kindled a 
conflagration which it will be very hard to 
control. 

The noble theory of political equality, lying 
at the base of our institutions, gives us no im- 
munity from those outrages upon law which 
have so often sprung out of the prejudices of 
race. We have sad enough proof of that in our 
own history, but we shall be thrice warned if 
we shall consider not only what has happened 
here but what has happened among other na- 
tions. 

One, therefore, who essays to stir up race 
hatred in this country must be deaf to the 
teachings of history or he must set before him- 
self a most exalted purpose to justify the peril 
to which he is exposing society. 

Of all the races of the world the one that 
has been the victim of the most outrageous and 
long continued persecution is the Jewish race. 
There is no fouler blot upon what we call civili- 


DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 19 


zation than the treatment that has been visited 
upon the Jews. After centuries of persecution 
the members of the race have been permitted in 
most countries during the last two or three gen- 
erations to enjoy the common rights of man- 
kind, and in our land they have, greatly to their 
own advantage and the advantage of the rest of 
us, been fully invested with the rights of citizen- 
ship. It would seem incredible in the light of 
experience that anybody should seek to revive 
the race feud against the Jew, and that such an 
attempt should be made in America of all coun- 
tries. Surely no man who hopes to look upon a 
world which is the abode of civilization can de- 
sire to see again a condition which constituted 
a glaring reproach upon all humanity. And no 
unwarped American could contemplate without 
shame our taking part in a movement that might 
bring to naught that emancipation which our 
country so honorably led in conferring. 

Nevertheless, an effort emanating from a re- 
sponsible source, has been undertaken among us 
to stir up race hatred against the Jews. Such a 
movement should not be permitted through in- 
action to gather strength. The time to oppose 
itis at the outset. It may be begun in ignorance, 
but, if its evil meaning is made clear, it can only 
be continued in open disregard of consequences 
the most deplorable. 


20 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


After the city of Jerusalem fell, despite one of 
the most desperate defenses recorded in history, 
the Roman conqueror forbade the Jews ever 
again to enter the city. Since that time they have 
been without a country which as a race they 
could call a home. They fled to North Africa, 
to Spain, and even to, Rome; itseli apenas 
climbed the Alps with the Roman legions into 
Germany and Gaul. They crossed the channel 
into England before the Saxon invader came to 
that country. They penetrated into the deserts 
of Arabia. There was no known country in the 
world in which the sons of Abraham did not seek 
a refuge. 


But while the fall of Jerusalem marked form- 
ally the ending of their state, their real disper- 
sion dates from an earlier time. It began in the 
sixth century before the Christian era. After 
the conquests of Alexander, it attained larger 
proportions, proceeding from Babylonia and 
Egypt as well as Palestine. In the time of 
Christ, Philo estimates the Jewish population of 
Egypt at a million, and the Jews in Babylonia 
and the other provinces of the Kingdom were 
more numerous than those of Palestine. Many 
were carried off into slavery by Pompey; many 
perished in the war of 66-72 A. D., or were car- 
ried off by the victors; many more suffered the 
same fate under Hadrian. 


DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 21 


But whatever the period to which it may be | 
assigned, it was as effective a world-wide disper- 
sion of a race as if its members had been sown by 
the hand of the Creator over every land. Ordi- 
narily a race thus scattered would in time 
have lost its identity and would not have ap- 
peared as a distinctive race in subsequent history. 
It would have been absorbed by the established 
races with which it came in contact; and the 
blending might have measurably affected the 
character of the different race stocks. In that 
way only it might have exerted influence upon 
subsequent civilization. Undoubtedly, the his- 
tory of a race distinguished by the achievements 
of the Jews would have survived, if only on ac- 
count of its deathless literature, of which its liter- 
ary glories were only surpassed by its ethical and 
religious values. But there would have lingered 
no Jewish Problem to vex subsequent times. 

Why, then, was the race not thus absorbed? 
More than one answer may be given and more 
than one of them may possess an element of 
truth. The foremost reason, probably, is found 
in the indomitable vitality of its religious faith 
—a faith that not only survived persecution but 
was made stronger on account of it. The Jews 
carried with them everywhere their devotion to 
the worship of Jehovah. With the exercise of 
this worship there had come to them from Moses 


22 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


as a part of the law a multitude of observances 
in the preparation of food and in the practical 
ordering of their lives. Perhaps the most power- 
ful influence was seen in the synagogue through 
which the whole people was educated in its re- 
ligion as revealed in its scriptures and in the 
unwritten law religious, moral and ceremonial. 
Thus, under conditions then existing in the world, 
so long as they adhered to their religion, with 
all that it implied they maintained their com- 
munity life and were to an extent isolated from 
the populations among which they lived. 

After the power of the Jews had been broken 
in Palestine a new sect appeared which at 
first was even more despised. Its members 
were cast into prison, fed to wild beasts, and 
subjected to nameless tortures. But it spon- 
taneously grew in strength until it soon 
became the overshadowing power in all Europe. 
When the Roman Empire was broken into 
many fragments, each imperfectly performing 
the functions of government, and a wave of 
barbarism threatened to sweep away all that 
was left of civilization, it was this new 
church which furnished a refuge from the tem- 
pest. It came to be the ruler over kings and 
made more easy to be endured the conditions of 
the peoples over whom they held sway. It 
formed the mighty bridge across which were 


DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 23 


borne so many of the memorials of the ancient 
world. Strange to say, it has been the same 
church, the Christian Church, which has been re- 
sponsible for the worst persecution of the Jews. 

But it should be said at the outset that the 
attitude of the entire Christian Church in all its 
branches, Catholic as well as Protestant, is radi- 
cally different today. Anti-Jewish agitation 
seems to have little or no support in the pulpit 
of any church. The words of one of the greatest 
preachers of modern times so strikingly reveals 
the change from the attitude of the Fourteenth 
Century that a liberal quotation of them is justi- 
fied. Henry Ward Beecher, speaking of the 
Jews, in one of the most powerful of his sermons 
said in his Plymouth pulpit: 

“These heroic people stand preeminent as the 
unrecognized benefactors of the human race. If 
any people ever lived whose faults might be con- 
doned in consideration of their invaluable serv- 
ices to religion and to civilization, it is the He- 
brews. If any people ever had a full measure of 
every form and degree of injustice meted out to 
them, it is the Hebrews. 

“Let us look at the contributions which have 
been made to the world’s stock in civilization 
by the Hebrews. It may surprise some to be 
told that commonwealth, as we understand it in 
republican governments, is unquestionably of the 


24 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


desert, and that our institutions sprang from the 
laws of Moses’s mind; but it is true. The com- 
monwealth of the Israelites contained in it the 
seeds of all subsequent commonwealths. 

‘“‘An appeal to the people on all great questions 
of polity; the educating all the people to have a 
public sentiment about their own affairs; the at- 
tempt to conduct a government, whether by 
prophet, by priest, or by king, for the benefit of 
the people themselves, these fundamental ele- 
ments belonged, and I think belonged first, to the 
Hebrew commonwealth. 

“Closely allied to the organization of govern- 
ment, and indeed precedent to it, as the very 
condition of successful and continuous govern- 
ment, is the household. Now, the family 
emerged from barbaric forms earlier among the 
Hebrews than among any other people and 
passed into that condition which has enabled it 
to perpetuate itself. In no other nation were 
children ever reared with more care. In intelli- 
gence, in home life, in purity, in exaltation of 
sentiment, and in extraordinary care in the teach- 
ing of children, there are not to be found in the 
palmiest communities of the best Christian house- 
holds those that surpass the best families of Jews 
at this time. We have borrowed their example, 
and are rearing our children after the pattern 


DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE ya) 


and inspiration of the Jewish household, as it has 
existed from the days of Moses onward. 

“T cannot fail to point out, too, how in that 
Oriental land and in that early day, the virtue of 
industry, of personal independence, of work, was 
understood and enforced. During the time that 
Plato declared that in his Ideal Republic there 
should be no mechanics, during that long inter- 
mediate period when to be a working man was 
to be shut out from all hope and honor and ele- 
vation in society, from four thousand years ago, 
down to this day, work has been honorable in 
the Jewish household, and that motto, that prov- 
erb stands, which stood at that early period: 
‘He who brings his child up without a trade 
brings him up to be a thief.’ On that principle 
the children of the richest Jews, of Jews in the 
highest station, were taught how to maintain 
themselves by their own hands and by their own 
industry. The making of work honorable is one 
of the boons which God has given to the human 
race through this remarkable people. 

“Then we are to take notice how in the Jewish 
nation, from the very earliest day, woman took 
that position to which she has been coming for 
two thousand years since through the inspira- 
tions of Christianity. Whatever a woman could 
do well and was called of God by inspiration to 
do, that she was permitted to do; and she stood 


26 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


honored by what she was. That invaluable con- 
tribution to humanity we derived from the early 
example of this great people. 

“The Jewish religion bred a race of men who 
put into the building of themselves the attri- 
butes of truth, of justice, of humanity, of morality, 
of gentleness and of humility. It reared men 
who in their own time had no equals, and with 
whom there was nothing to compare. The 
Greeks built better temples than the Hebrews, 
but though Hebrew genius had never carved a 
marble it did better—it carved men. 

“The Jew may have been deficient in the per- 
ception of the beautiful as it was developed in 
matter; but his soul was all aflame with a con- 
ception of the beautiful as it was developed in 
the mind. 


“*As the hart panteth 
After the water brooks, 
So panteth my soul 
After thee, O, God?!’ 


“In the whole literature of the globe, you can- 
not find another such aspiration, and this is but 
one of ten thousand of the breathings of the Jew- 
ish mind, of its yearning after the divine. 

“No people ever taught the world such a les- 
son of endurance, of indestructible manhood, un- 
der every conceivable aggression and wrong, as 
the Jews have. It has been the very genius of 


DANGERS OF RACE PREJUDICE 27 


the Hebrew people to work for the welfare of 
mankind by working for their own welfare. 
They fought the battle of liberty in fighting for 
their own right to live. If ever a race was 
heroic, this race has been.” 


CHAPTER II 
THE ProtTocots: POLITICAL FORGERIES 


The so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” 
have recently been brought forward among us as 
a basis for anti-Jewish agitation. And this has 
been done after they have been fully discredited 
in Europe, where scholars of independence and 
character had no difficulty in penetrating into 
their fraudulent character. 

Although the protocols have been many times 
effectually exploded, what they contain and the 
manner of their production shed such light 
upon the character of anti-Jewish agitation that 
more than a cursory reference to them is de- 
manded. The Jews have not merely been at- 
tacked because they were Jews but sometimes 
they have been assailed in order to promote some 
political or social purpose which did not pri- 
marily concern them; and the attack upon the 
Jews based on the protocols had primarily a 
political purpose. It may be said that the pro- 
tocols pretend to be the confession by “Hebrew 
Elders” of the malign purposes of their race 
toward civilization. What through centuries 
has been in effect charged times without number 
by the enemies of the Jewish race, it was very 
convenient to have put in the form of a confes- 

28 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 29 


sion by somebody who, whether he had an ex- 
istence or not, should at least be credited with 
a title which would imply authority to be the 
spokesman of the Jews. The Jewish race, it is 
confessed by these mythical Elders, in effect 
cherishes the purpose of producing revolution, 
overturning government, destroying Christianity 
and civilization, and in general of propagating 
the diseases of which all the world is now so 
mortally sick—and, in some inscrutable fashion, 
out of it all, to secure the dominion of the world 
for the Jew. 

This is surely a very ambitious program thus 
to be formally acknowledged by these Elders and 
so obligingly delivered over to the enemies of the 
Jew, with the result of fomenting agitation 
against the race. We are asked to believe that the 
Jews now inhabiting the earth seek to sacrifice 
themselves and subordinate their own interests 
entirely to the interests of the Jews of the future, 
whose power and glory they are thus attempting 
to secure. Also, these mysterious Elders would 
appear to be somewhat given to credulity to be- 
lieve that the billion and a half of non-Jewish 
people who would still survive would placidly 
yield authority to the few million of Jews for 
whom triumph had been secured in the manner 
proposed. There are other considerations in 
abundance which should have suggested caution 


30 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


in accepting these “protocols.” It should cer- 
tainly have imposed caution that they were 
brought forward for sensational disclosure not 
by a friend but by an enemy of Zion; and this 
enemy who produced them one who gave differ- 
ent and contradictory versions of how he pro- 
cured them. 

Competent scholarship made prompt exposure 
of the fact that some of the contents were pilfered 
bodily from older documents which were of un- 
questionable anti-Jewish origin. There is not 
one circumstance which sustains their authen- 
ticity. Professor: Cy EO” Wrieht \ibrarianeer 
the London Library, writes: 

“We are left wondering why this kind of 
nauseating out-pouring of a perverted religiosity 
should be foisted on the British public in an 
anonymous shape without a clue to its real origin 
and full context.” 

It is disclosed that the revelation is entirely an 
excerpt from a book by a Russian reactionary 
and partisan of autocracy published, not this 
year, nor last year, but many years ago. That 
there existed or ever had been in this author’s 
possession any authenticated dependable docu- 
ments was not even claimed. The writer af- 
fected merely to quote from manuscripts en- 
trusted to him by an anonymous acquaintance 
—concocted from what this Russian propagan- 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 31 


dist himself describes in his Moscow publication 
as “incomplete notes of lectures,” delivered by 
an unnamed lecturer, on unknown dates, “in 
Paris about 1901.” 

“An intimate knowledge of Russian literature 
and intellectual life for the past twenty years 
convinces me that these protocols are worthless,” 
is the dismissing comment of the London Libra- 
rian. 

These protocols, freshly revamped, fashioned 
to serve the vicious primitive purpose of hate, 
can mislead no one who in fairness gives them 
even casual scrutiny. They are clumsy and stu- 
pid forgeries fabricated without cunning. In- 
deed, the man who produced them, styling him- 
self Sergius Nilus, of the Department of Foreign 
Relations, Moscow—offers them as a_ post- 
script to explosive chapters of abuse that he is 
bent upon perpetrating against the Anglo-Saxon 
race. Even the London publishers who, com- 
mercially, had great stake in the canard’s distri- 
bution, appear to have found any pretence of 
authenticity impracticable. In a featured “Pref- 
ace” they confess that there is doubt of trust- 
worthiness, revealing that the anonymous author 
of the book is unable to provide any certificate 
of genuineness whatever. The “Preface” makes 
this confession, which is more direct than that 
of the “Hebrew Elders”: 


32 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


“We have said that this document flashes a 
blaze of light, and so it does, but whether the 
document is genuine or not, whether the blaze of 
light is true or false, can only be judged by in- 
ternal evidence and probabilities. We may say 
at once that Nilus advances nothing in the na- 
ture of real evidence to prove the document and 
that his account of how it came into his hands 
consists of assertion only, without evidence to 
support it.” 

Ample appraisal of both the author’s manner 
and matter can be found in the fact that even the 
rapacious maw of Russia’s Anti-Semitic Ency- 
clopedia will not take a syllable of it. “Jumble 
of embittered nonsense,” is stamped upon it by a 
scholar as distinguished as Aylmer Maude, 
known the world over as the translator of Count 
Tolstoi into English. There has just been 
brought to light a French book published more 
than a half century ago against Napoleon the 
Third. Parallel passages taken from this book 
and from the protocols show such an exact cor- 
respondence in substance and phrasing as to 
prove that the forger of the protocols was a liter- 
ary pirate of a high order. 

The English speaking nations have until re- 
cent times been remarkably free from that politi- 
cal and ecclesiastical anti-Semitism which has too 
often shown itself upon the continent of Europe 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 33 


and indeed has seemed entrenched there; but 
two years ago there was an outbreak of this 
anti-Semitism in England and the United States. 
There was the same starting point in both coun- 
tries. The basis of agitation was found in Eng- 
lish translations from the Russian of the proto- 
cols with portions of the introduction and epi- 
logue of the Russian editor, Sergius Nilus, and 
comments and applications by the anonymous 
translators who discreetly withheld their names. 
The translation published in America was inde- 
pendent of that brought out in England and was 
of a later edition of the original. A German 
translation had appeared a short time before and 
a French one almost simultaneously with the 
English versions, and there were publications in 
other European languages at about the same 
time. Very soon after the appearance of the 
“Jewish Peril” with its translation and interpre- 
tation of the protocols, the London Morning 
Post, the leading organ of the Tory party in 
England, inaugurated a series of sensational 
Bpticlestipon this).eerily)\)\ Dheyaction or the 
Post was anticipated by a few weeks in America, 
a weekly journal here having already seized upon 
the protocols. In the virulence of its attacks upon 
the Jews as a race and indiscriminately upon 
individual members of it, the American publica- 


34 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


tion was by no means second to the Tory organ 
of Great Britain. 

The London Morning Post articles were col- 
lected in a volume entitled “The Cause of World 
Unrest” with an introduction appropriately in the 
same vein, and this volume was immediately re- 
published in New York. The simultaneous open- 
ing of this campaign in places so widely sepa- 
rated and based on a forged document which 
had appeared more than a dozen years before 
was obviously not an accidental coincidence. 
Who were the instigators of the campaign? All 
the circumstances combine to make it appear as 
certain as such things can be that the authors of 
the plan were none other than some Russian 
émigrés who at that time were endeavoring to 
gain the support of the European and American 
governments and of the public opinion of the 
world for the military enterprises undertaken to 
overthrow the Soviet Government in Russia and 
restore the old autocratic régime. It seemed to 
be an effective means to this end to convince the 
different nations that the then-existing govern- 
ment of Russia was a Jewish oligarchy forced 
upon the unhappy Russian people and that it 
was only the first stage in the execution of a 
deep-laid plan for bringing the whole world 
under the dominion of the Jews; and the protocols 
were conveniently brought to light as a confes- 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 35 


sion of the purpose of the Jewish race to accom- 
plish that very result. Asa part of this program 
the armies of Denikin and Wrangel scattered 
the protocols broadcast in the field of their opera- 
tions, at the same time inciting massacres of the 
Jews wherever they went. 

The propaganda for English readers, of which 
“The Cause of World Unrest” may stand as an 
example, was of the same origin and character. 
The purpose of the propaganda in all the coun- 
tries was to establish the contention that the 
crisis in which the world found itself and the 
imminent deadly peril which menaced it was not 
due to the atrocious and intolerable tyranny of 
the old Russian autocracy or to the obvious rea- 
sons for unrest which were elsewhere showing 
themselves as a result of the war, but to a for- 
midable conspiracy, the outcome of the long 
cherished purposes of a race, and that this con- 
spiracy had as its aim to undermine and overturn 
the whole structure of our modern civilization, 
political, economic, social and religious in order 
to establish upon its ruins the dominion of the 
Hebrew race. 

This was a beautiful program certainly, even 
if somewhat transparent. The plan and the 
means to be employed in order to carry it out 
were directed by a secret Jewish order which al- 
ready constituted in a large measure the invisi- 


36 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ble government of Europe and America. The 
documentary proof of this purpose was furnished 
by the protocols, the genuineness of which it was 
claimed had been established by the exact corre- 
spondence between the plan which they laid down 
and the history of Europe from the French to 
the Russian revolutions. The author, who be- 
trayed by some fatal slips that he was not an 
Englishman but probably a Russian, gained the 
greater part of his acknowledged inspiration 
from a line of French authors beginning with the 
closing of the eighteenth century. He ascribed 
the revolution and subsequent democratic and 
anti-clerical movements to the machinations of 
this great conspiracy. In the older writings of 
this line the conspirators were the free Masons; 
later when anti-Semitism became fashionable in 
France it was discovered that the Jews were the 
instigators of it all, working behind the veil of 
secrecy of the Masonic orders. Indeed the 
French translation of the protocols bore the title 
“Le Péril Judéo Maconnique.” This combina- 
tion appealed to the Russians, and it appears in 
the publications of Nilus. According to a French 
writer who is cited as authority by the London 
Morning Post, the Templars formed a sinister 
connection with the order of assassins which in- 
fested the mountains around Jerusalem! and 
“whose members must have been Jews since 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 37 


their object was the rebuilding of Solomon’s 
temple.” The first Masonic initiation was re- 
ceived by the master of the order from the old 
man of the mountain in a cavern on Mount Leb- 
anon! The French and Russian literature of 
this Judeo-Masonic peril frequently linked the 
protestant nations, particularly the English, as 
descendants of the lost ten tribes of Israel, with 
the Jews and Masons as allies in the Judaizing 
of the Christian nations and in forwarding other 
nefarious designs on all the good in the world. 

It may be noted here that Free Masonry has 
been diligently put forward by anti-Jewish 
writers and by some who profess friendship for 
the Jews as one of the instrumentalities for the 
propagation of Jewish power. One would infer 
that Free Masonry was one of the established 
Jewish orders. A basis for this inference is 
found not merely in such mystical writings as 
the protocols but a writer of the note of Mr. Hil- 
aire Belloc speaks of “The Institution of Free 
Masonry (with which they- [the Jews] are so 
closely allied and all the ritual of which is Jewish 
iicharacter).:* 

The relations of Masonry to the Jews are prob- 
ably not essentially different in America from 
what they are in Europe and it is a well-known 
fact that some of the Masonic lodges in America 


*The Jews, Hilaire Belloc, Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1922. 


38 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


have no Jewish membership and in the American 
order as a whole the number of Jews is much 
smaller relatively than their proportion of the 
population. 

President Harding was a Mason as was also the 
first President, George Washington, and between 
the two may be found such other architects of dis- 
order and conspirators against the world’s 
peace as Taft and Roosevelt and Andrew Jack- 
son. If the Masonic ritual is Jewish, precisely 
the same damning charge may be made against 
the “ritual” of the Christian religion. From the 
mystical workings of the professional anti-Jew- 
ish mind we may yet expect to see evolved the 
charge that Christianity itself is a contrivance 
of the Jews by which they aim to secure domin- 
ion of the world. 

It will be interesting to some American readers 
to know that the Tory London Morning Post, one 
of the first antagonists of the League of Nations, 
puts President Wilson and Lenin in the same 
category. Between the fourteen points of Wil- 
son and the Kremlin Manifestos as disintegrat- 
ing forces “there is,” it says, “little to choose.” 
“Common to both Washington and Moscow is 
the necessity of an international control of the 
world. To the one it is the League of Nations, to 
the other it is the Third Internationale. The idea 
is the same although the instruments are differ- 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 39 


ent.” At Paris Mr. Wilson was declared to be 
surrounded by Jews and to have become com- 
pletely under their influence. A French writer 
on Wilson takes the view that Free Masonry was 
used as a channel for the dissemination of these 
ideas. 

On the protocols themselves which are alleged 
to reveal the secrets of this remarkable con- 
spiracy, it is necessary to say but little more. 
They were published in Russia in 1905 as the con- 
cluding chapter to the second edition of a book, 
first issued two years previously by Nilus, of 
whom little is known beyond the fact that he had 
been connected in a subordinate capacity with a 
branch of the Russian secret police. He seemed 
to be possessed with the idea that the last times 
were at hand, signs of which he saw in the popu- 
larity of Tolstoi and the education of women. 
The heading of the chapter containing the pro- 
tocols is “Anti-Christ as a Near Political Possi- 
bility.” 

Among the three or four contradictory stories 
which Nilus told of how the protocols came into 
his hands, perhaps not the least absurd was that 
they contained a plan worked out by the leaders 
of the Jewish people during many centuries, 
and were finally presented to the council of eld- 
ers by Theodore Herzl, the “Prince of the Exile” 
at the first Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897. 


40 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


That they were forgeries, as I have said, inter- 
nal evidence puts beyond a doubt, and it leaves 
equally little doubt that they were invented in 
order to support the cause of Russian absolut- 
ism. They make the Jews themselves declare 
that autocracy is the only form of government 
under which mankind can flourish and that all 
the liberal propaganda of constitutional govern- 
ment, of democracy in the state and of religious 
freedom are only devices of the Jews to destroy 
civilized governments and the Christian church, 
to make way for universal autocracy at the head 
of which would be a Jewish king. 

The authors of the forged protocols did not 
draw heavily upon their own intellectual re- 
sources, but they helped themselves to whatever 
suited their purpose wherever it was found. 
Their indebtedness to the scene in the Jewish 
burying-ground in Goedsche’s romance, “Biar- 
ritz,’ was at once recognized and an inter- 
mediate line, discovered in a separate recasting 
of the novelist, was put in the mouth of 
the representative of the twelve tribes into 
a single discourse, “The Rabbi’s Speech.” Later 
on in a definite exposure of the fraud to 
which I have alluded the London Times proved 
that the principles and methods avowed in the 
protocols are in a large part paraphrased from 
an anonymous attack on the policies of Napo- 


THE PROTOCOLS: POLITICAL FORGERIES 41 


leon III, published in 1865, under a title which 
in translation runs: “Dialogue in Hell between 
Machiavelli and Montesquieu or the Statecraft 
of Machiavelli in the 19th Century.” 

Certainly this adoption of methods not un- 
common in Russia and in the other continental 
countries does little credit either to England or 
America. The wonder is that anybody should 
have thought anything resembling public opinion 
or anything more stable than a passing preju- 
dice could be built up in the two English-speak- 
ing countries by the employment of such mystical 
trash. And yet it has been made the occasion of 
one of the most formidable and widespread 
drives ever directed against the Jews. 

The protocols are of importance here because 
they involve a sinister invitation to re-enact one 
of the most baleful chapters of all history, and to 
take a leap backward into a past which we would 
willingly forget. What gain can one see for our 
country or for civilization if amid the babble of 
confused race feuds which already threaten the 
United States, we are to uncover the banked 
fires of Jewish proscription? A glance at the 
past will show the danger, for in a time when 
the most barbarous scenes of history have been 
re-enacted with horrors added, it is wholly un- 
safe to presume that anything that has happened 
may not happen again. 


CHAPTER AIE 
PERSECUTION’S PREFACE TO A NEw WORLD 


SPAIN was easily the most tolerant of all the 
countries of Europe in its treatment of the Jews 
before the establishment of the Inquisition and 
after the rule of the Visigoths had been shat- 
tered. Granada was especially liberal towards 
them. This was doubtless due to the fact that 
it was the last foothold of the Moslem power in 
Spain, for the Arab rulers practiced a religious 
toleration which they extended alike to Jews and 
Christians. With the ascendency of Christian- 
ity and its practical control of the civil authority, 
intolerance made its appearance. In Granada 
the Jews were encouraged to engage in trade 
and to gratify their thirst for an education. In 
the Christian kingdoms of Spain the treatment 
they received was more unsteady and capricious, 
but they were given much liberty and the avenues 
of culture were open to them. They attained dis- 
tinction in the universities and were permitted, 
with few or no restrictions, to engage in finance 
and trade. This period in both Moslem and 
Christian Spain is regretfully referred to by 
historians of the Jewish race as “the golden 
age” in Spain for the Jews. It was golden in 
the freedom which it extended to them and in 

42 


PERSECUTION’S PREFACE TO A NEW WORLD 43 


the opportunity that it gave to the uncrushed 
Jew to show of what he was capable. 

But much of the gilding was rubbed off of 
this golden age at the opening of the Thirteenth 
Century by new and humiliating impositions. 
Consorting with Christians was banned under 
heavy penalties. The Jews were compelled to 
live in ghettos, and in most of these ghettos there 
was but a single gate. They were ordered to 
Wear some distinguishing badge, which would 
make it clear that they were Jews. Humiliating 
exactions were imposed upon them, and the 
authorities were insistent not merely that they 
should always remember that they were Jews, 
but that they deserved to be under the ban of 
Christians. For instance, in one Spanish city 
every Jew was required to pay an annual tax of 
thirty dineros as a perpetual reminder of the 
number of pieces of silver Judas received. This 
surely was a strange appraisal to put upon a 
race of which the other apostles and the Re- 
deemer himself were members. But it has not 
been an uncommon practice for the Jew hater to 
treat Judas as the typical member of the race. 
It would be as justifiable to treat Benedict Ar- 
nold as the typical American or Englishman. 

But in comparison with the treatment accorded 
the Jew generally in Europe, there is warrant 
for regarding the toleration which he enjoyed in 


44 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Spain as marking relatively a golden age. The 
Jew prospered on the whole and along with 
him the country prospered also. He had an op- 
portunity to gratify his ambition, to make accu- 
mulation, to take part in enterprise, and in nearly 
all, if not all, activities relating to business, he 
had the privileges of those about him. 

He was forbidden, however, in the Christian 
States from holding lands, which was a serious 
bar at a time when landed property was the 
chief form of property—and he had to wear his 
hateful badge. 

But compared, for instance, with the Italy of 
later years, where the daily overflow of filth 
from the Tiber seeped into the habitations of the 
Jews, and where they were compelled to undergo 
even physical mutilation and torture, he had rea- 
son to be grateful for the treatment accorded him 
in Spain. 

The Jew demonstrated that he had a genius 
for finance. Spain especially courted him and 
distributed titles and decorations to reward him 
for the help he had given and to encourage him 
to make new contributions. Largely on account 
of the Jews, the national finance of Spain was 
masterful, and it enabled her to maintain her po- 
sition and to extend her power through her wars. 

A glance at the other countries will show that 
they accorded the Jew few of the opportunities 


PERSECUTION S PREFACE TO A NEW WORLD 45 


he had in Spain. It was not a time when human 
rights cut any figure, even for those who were 
not Jews. A man received little consideration 
just because he was a man. 

The Jews were subject to repressive laws and 
to the most obstinate prejudice. Riots against 
them were under little restraint. 

In France, the victims of invidious distinctions, 
and shut off from the ordinary avenues of mak- 
ing a living, they were finally banished alto- 
gether. The persecution against them reached 
its climax in a massacre, in which it is estimated 
by some historians that as many as ten thousand 
Jews lost their lives. 

German princes let out their Jews as soldiers 
to fight for other countries. 

At least one English king threw them into 
prison, and wrung money out of them through 
the most abhorrent torture. 

If there was no other reason for christening 
that period in the world’s history the Dark Ages, 
the treatment accorded the Jews would be a suf- 
ficient reason. 

The Fifteenth Century’s horror and glory 
were Spain’s; and in the center of that horror 
and glory looms the Jew. The climax of all per- 
secution in Europe was, strangely enough, 
reached in Spain, in the country which had given 
him the most generous treatment. — 


46 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Ferdinand and Isabella were persuaded that 
their kingdom and Christianity itself were in 
peril on account of the “conversos” who were 
Moors and Jews who had been forced to accept 
Christianity but who in secret clung to their 
former faiths. The Inquisition was introduced 
on the urgency of the King and Queen. Many 
of the Bishops protested to the Pope. The fact 
remains that the Inquisition was introduced and 
that most frightful engine of torture and oppres- 
sion was turned against the conversos. Proces- 
sions of these unhappy creatures would be driven 
through the streets to public squares, and they 
would be tortured, strangled and burned alive. 
The atrocious treatment visited upon the Jews by 
the authorities under the forms of law reacted 
upon the multitude, and as a result massacres 
were carried on with little restraint or discrimina- 
tion. Under the rigorous rule of the Inquisi- 
tion, the number of Jews in Spain was greatly 
reduced, and then an edict of banishment 
was promulgated against all who should not 
within four months declare themselves Chris- 
tians and receive the rite of Baptism. It 
was, in effect, a decree of expulsion against 
most of the survivors of the race. But thousands 
of Jews remained secretly after the edict, and 
the Inquisition was scarcely less active for the 


PERSECUTION’S PREFACE TO A NEW WORLD 47 


next two centuries in persecuting secret Jews 
both in Spain and in her American colonies. 

For them there were few lands to which to fly. 
Discrimination was nearly world-wide. Almost 
everywhere they would be compelled to face pro- 
scription and prejudice. Just as the Mohammedan 
in Spain had taught a lesson in toleration, so an 
asylum for the fugitives was found in the 
dominions of the Sultan of Turkey. Religious 
toleration was a part of the fundamental law of 
Islam, and Turkey did only what other Moham- 
medan States had done. Whether the great pros- 
perity which Turkey then enjoyed was aug- 
mented by the influx of the Jews, it received 
many of that race from Spain, among whom, was 
Don Jose Mendes Masi, the famous financier. 

Spain, at the time of the Inquisition, contained 
about seven and a half million people, of whom 
over a quarter of a million were Jews; less than 
one-fourth of these accepted baptism to escape 
expulsion. The remainder lost their lives, or 
were forthwith driven into exile. They were 
forbidden to take gold or silver out of the coun- 
try, and therefore it made little difference 
whether or not they were permitted to collect the 
debts that were due them. The property that 
they were permitted to carry with them was thus 
limited to only a few forms, which would have 
little money value. To drive a whole race into 


48 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


exile, into new lands, and stripped of nearly all 
its possessions, was cruelty of the most bar- 
barous kind. 

“The sum of human misery inflicted by this 
edict,’ writes H. C. Lea, Christian historian, 
“was incomputable,” in sequel as it was to “the 
most glorious centuries of Spain, those in which 
the Jews enjoyed the greatest power in the 
courts of kings, prelates and nobles in Castile 
and Aragon, when the treasures of the kingdoms 
were virtually in their hands, when it was their 
skill in organizing the supplies that rendered 
practicable the enterprises of such monarchs as 
Alfonso VI and VII, Fernando III and Jaime I.” 

The Edict of exile was finally put in force in 
August, 1492. It seems to be more than a coin- 
cidence that the date coincided with the Ninth 
Day of Ab which had long been observed by the 
Jews as the anniversary of the destruction of the 


Holy Temple. 
And here may be witnessed one of the start- 


ling contrasts of history. 

On the 2nd day of August the last of two hun- 
dred thousand Jews were scourged out of the 
kingdom. Nothing on that day could be more 
odious to the nation than a Jew. He was made 
a national sacrifice. On the next day, the 3rd 
day of August, out of the same port from which 
the remnant of the Jews were driven, the fleet of 


PERSECUTION S PREFACE TO A NEW WORLD 49 


Christopher Columbus, financed by Jews, sailed 
on its epochal voyage which was to end in the 
discovery of the new world. On the 2nd of 
August the Jew was loaded down with the 
hatred of a nation and reached the lowest depth 
of contempt. On the next day he was seen not 
merely as a patron of the nation, but as the bene- 
factor of the world, ushering in a new era in the 
history of mankind. 

Emilo Castellar, accepted in Spain as the de- 
pendable biographer of Christopher Columbus, 
makes note of the fact that it happened “that 
one of the last vessels transporting into exile the 
Jews expelled from Spain, passed by the little 
fleet bound in search of another world.” 

The most striking emphasis was thus given 
to the contrast between the humiliation and woe 
that had come upon the Jews in Spain, and one 
of the most shining events of history, in which 
the Jews had a noble share. 

Enforcement of the edict nearly completed the 
work of the obliteration of the Jews in Spain. 
The country had been under so great a debt to 
their business activities and enterprise, and pub- 
lic finance had owed so much to their manage- 
ment, that their departure from Spain marked 
the beginning of the decline of the glory of that 
country. The governing bodies of cities sent ap- 
pealing memorials to their king. They presented 


50 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


the black records of commerce prostrated and 
of complaints that artisans out of employment 
were compelled to flee to other kingdoms. 

The history of the first unsuccessful attempt of 
Columbus to secure the means with which to 
make his voyage is known to every school boy, 
but the source from which the means were finally 
procured is much less widely known. The Span- 
ish King and Queen were greatly interested 
in the plans of Columbus but they were poor, 
and were unable to help the navigator. He 
was turned away .for lack of funds. But 
it happened that there was a wealthy Jew at 
the palace. His name was Luis de Santangel. 
He was one of the conversos, to whom the decree 
did not apply. He was masterful in public 
finance. After Columbus had been turned away 
by the King and Queen, de Santangel took up 
his cause and prevailed upon them to ask Colum- 
bus to return. 

The story that the Queen pawned her jewels 
that she might secure the means with which to 
help Columbus is a pretty romance. Luis de 
Santangel provided the means out of his own 
private purse. He advanced the money neces- 
sary to equip the fleet, which was said to be four 
million maravedis. This made it possible for 
Columbus to undertake his voyage.* 





*AppenDIx: ‘“‘The Jew Who Established Columbus.” 


PERSECUTION’S PREFACE TO A NEW WORLD 51 


There were Jews also who were members of 
the company which sailed under Columbus. His 
physician, Bernal, was a Jew, as also were the 
surgeon, Marco, and one of the two interpreters. 
In order to find his way upon the seas, reliance 
was had upon the maps and tables prepared by 
Cresques, who was commonly known as the 
“Map Jew,” and whose work had been proven 
and revised by Zacuto, another Jew, who was re- 
puted to be the foremost mathematician of Spain. 
It is significant that the first letters written by 
Columbus recording his successes and describing 
his discoveries were addressed to Luis de Sant- 
angel and Luis de Santangel’s cousin, Gabriel 
Sanchez, who was the converso treasurer of 
Aragon. 

The verse of James Russell Lowell has philo- 
sophical application: 


For mankind are one in spirit, and an instinct bears along 

Round the earth’s electric circle, the swift flash of right 
or wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Humanity’s vast 
frame, 

Through its ocean-sundered fibres feels the gush of joy 
or shame— 

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest have equal 
claim. 


Spain surely lost by the distress she brought 
upon the Jew. But the whole world, including 
Spain, shared in the gain which he helped secure 
for mankind. Whether the jewels of the Queen 


oe PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


had been pawned elsewhere as cynics sportively 
relate, they were not available to help the dis- 
coverer. The undoubted fact, which has impor- 
tance here, is that Luis de Santangel nobly 
stepped in and advanced the money that was 
needed. Isabella gave the royal stamp; but that 
it was given, and the means provided, and that 
the fleet of Columbus spread its sails for the new 
world, was due to a Jew. And the debt that the 
world is under to the Jews would be greatly aug- 
mented, if, as a result of the investigation now 
being carried on by some of the learned societies 
of Europe, it should appear that not only was 
the money for the adventure furnished by a Jew 
but that the great navigator himself was a mem- 
ber of the same race. 

History would indeed furnish a no less strik- 
ing contrast than was seen between the banish- 
ment of the Jews from Spain, and their making 
the expedition of Columbus possible, if it should 
prove that after all, the voyage resulted in found- 
ing a new theater for the persecution of the Jew. 
The distinctive principles heretofore avowed by 
America will need to be abandoned before so sin- 
ister a contrast can be established. 


CHAP eR, 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 


THE banishment of the Jews from Spain in 
1492 by no means cured the ills from which that 
country had been suffering, nor did it terminate 
the history of the Jewish persecution there. 

It is said that shortly after the enforcement of 
the decree of banishment an attempt was made 
to bring the Jews back again. Commerce had 
declined sadly; public finance showed the lack of 
the direction it had received from the exiles, and 
the industry of the country was languishing. 
The Jews, however, were not attracted, even if 
—as is not historically certified—any such over- 
ture were made them. 

But persecution was a long time dying, and 
even after all the burnings and banishments there 
appear to have been Jews enough left to perse- 
cute. Two hundred years after Ferdinand and 
Isabella there was a Madrid burning of heretics, 
so-called, of whom nearly a score were Jews. 
This festival of persecution was conducted with 
great ceremony as a part of the solemnizing of 
one of the puppet marriages of royalty. Boxes 
for the royal family and for the nobility were 
erected in an imposing public square. A proces- 
sion marked by great pomp and ceremony passed 


53 


04 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


by. Reports of the event have been preserved in 
ereat detail, but an official memorandum made 
by a Briton who witnessed it conveys a sufficient 
glimpse of it: 

About 6 of ye clock the evening 19 Jews were carried 
to ye place of execution, being halfe a musket shot out of 
toun, those wch were reduced to ye xtian beliefe being 
12 in number were first strangled & then burnt, the 7 vics 
6 men & one woman were throun into the fire a live, the 
execution was not finished until 3 of ye clock in ye 
morning. 

Hond Sir Yr Honrs most faithful & most obedt 
Servan. 

Sir Rich Bulstrode Rich Fitz Gerald 

What happened in Spain was in a general way 
characteristic of what happened elsewhere in 
Kurope, but just as in Spain the opportunities of 
the Jews had been greater, so, when persecution 
set in, it was attended with more barbarous cru- 
elties there than in other countries. 

In Germany discrimination of the most aus- 
tere kind was very sternly applied. A striking 
picture of conditions existing in the latter part 
of the 18th Century is given by Christian William 
Dohm, military councillor under Frederick the 
Great: 

“Almost in all parts of Europe the tendency 
of the laws and the whole constitution of the 
state is to prevent as far as possible the increase 
of these Asiatic refugees. Residence is either 
denied them or granted at a fixed sum for a 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 55 


short time. A large proportion of Jews thus find 
the gates of every town closed against them; 
they are inhumanly driven away from every bor- 
der, and nothing is left to them except to starve, 
or to save themselves from starvation by crime. 
Every guild would think itself dishonored by ad- 
mitting a Jew as a member; therefore in almost 
every country the Hebrews are debarred from 
handicrafts and mechanical arts. Only men of 
rare genius, amidst such oppressive circum- 
stances, retain courage and serenity to devote 
themselves to the fine arts and the sciences.” 

Their minds not less than their bodies were 
threatened with starvation. The schools and 
universities were closed against them. They 
lived under the heaviest handicaps if they 
were permitted to live at all, and when they suc- 
ceeded in accumulating property it was liable to 
be taken from them by force. A traveller, com- 
ing by chance upon a group of the hunted and 
starved Jews upon the continent during the 17th 
Century, might well question whether they were 
human beings. That these outcasts, so emphati- 
cally under the ban, should persist, in the face of 
such discrimination so long continued, occasions 
wonder at the vitality of the race. 

Bishop Greer epitomizes for Christian ob- 
servers the historic miracle. ‘Other nationalities 
in the history of the world,” says that student, 


56 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW. 


“and some of them very great and apparently 
the strongest, as though they were destined for- 
ever to endure, have risen and run their course 
and fallen down, or fallen in, and perished and 
ceased to be. But here is a nationality which, 
through all the changing experiences and vicissi- 
tudes of the centuries, has not only preserved 
but extended its dominion, has not only survived 
but flourished and advanced; which, without los- 
ing or compromising itself, has nevertheless in- 
spirited itself into nearly all the other nations of 
the world, and whose quickening and vital en- 
ergy, as George Eliot observes, is beating today 
in the pulses, unnoted and uncredited, of many 
millions of people.” 

Martin Luther, coming into prominence and 
power as the mighty reformer that he was, was 
enough hostile to the Jews to have pleased the 
authorities of the Inquisition. “What then is to 
be done to this depraved, damned people?” he 
asked. In answer to his own question he pro- 
ceeded to advise that the synagogues be reduced 
to ashes “for the glory of the Lord and Chris- 
tianity,”’ and then that the Christians “destroy 
the homes of the Jews and drive them all under 
one roof or into a stable like the gypsies, that all 
prayer books and the Hebrew Bible be forcibly 
taken from them and that they should be for- 
bidden to pray or to speak the name of God on 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 57 


pain of death, that their money should be confis- 
cated and that they be reduced to servitude.” 

Luther was the leader of Protestantism and 
his words created great animosity against the 
Jews. But it is easy to convict him of inconsist- 
/ency regarding them. At the beginning of the 
Reformation he said: “They are kinsmen, broth- 
ers and cousins of our Lord; hence, if one is 
to glory in flesh and blood, the Jews are more 
closely related to Christ than we are. I beg you, 
therefore, my dear papists, when you have your 
fill of abusing me as a heretic, that you revile me 
as a Jew.” Again he said, “A few very insipid 
theologians still defend this fury, and prate in 
their arrogance that the Jews are the slaves of 
the Christians and are subject to the Emperor. 
Wherefore, tell me, I pray, who would accept 
our religion, no matter how meek and forbearing 
he be, when he sees that they are treated by us 
with so much cruelty, not only in an unchristian 
but even in a bestial manner?” And this was an- 
other Luther fulmination: “Our fools, the pa- 
pists, bishops, sophists and monks, have hitherto 
so dealt with the Jews that a good Christian 
must needs become a Jew; for they have dealt 
with the Jews as though the latter were dogs 
and not human beings, and have done nothing 
but scold them.” 


58 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


In heart and conscience there may not have 
been two Luthers, but there were two Lutheran 
epochs. In one (when he issued his book of 
1523, “Jesus a Born Jew’) he showed modera- 
tion, “It is my advice that they be treated gently 
* %* %* permit them to work and acquire sub- 
stance among us, that they may find opportunity 
to be with us and about us.” Then, again in 
“The Jews and Their Lies,’ 1542, he savagely 
speaks of “cutting their tongues through the 
back of their necks.” 

Influences that centered about one of the 
noble figures of history, Moses Mendelssohn, 
who lived two centuries after Luther’s time, 
had very much to do with mitigating the treat- 
ment of the Jews in the German-speaking coun- 
tries. The charm of his life and his great liter- 
ary fame won for him a high place in the public 
opinion of Germany and Austria. He made an 
effective contribution to freedom of the Jews in 
his “Jerusalem oder, die religiose Macht und 
Judenthum.” He it was who most influenced 
Dohm, the Christian, to write that epoch- 
making work in favor of Jewish emancipa- 
tion which aroused opinion in all the German 
States, and he it was whom Lessing embodied 
in his “Nathan The Wise,” which proved to 
be one of the most popular and lasting crea- 
tions in German dramatic poetry. That the 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 39 


great poet should in this masterpiece select a Jew 
as the embodiment of wisdom and virtue won for 
Lessing the fierce antagonism of prejudiced 
people. But the work powerfully strengthened 
the forces that were cooperating in favor of do- 
ing justice to the Jews. It was a most fortunate 
circumstance for them that at last support had 
been enlisted from among the literary masters 
of the age. Toleration soon became fashionable. 
It was manifest in the public mind and was or- 
dered in royal decrees. Christians were urged to 
practice it. Universities and schools opened to 
the Jews. Many vexatious restrictions were re- 
moved and while complete equality was not ac- 
corded the race, its conditions were greatly im- 
proved. 

France, as I have said, drove the great mass 
of the Jews out of the country at an earlier time 
and consequently there were few Jews left upon 
whom barbarities might be inflicted. Where the 
Jews were permitted to be, however, they re- 
ceived little better treatment than had been ac- 
corded them in Spain even during the inquisi- 
tion. But there came about in that country, even 
if slowly, amelioration in the treatment of the 
Jews. Still they perforce led fugitive lives, hid- 
ing in the shadows until the period of the French 
Revolution. Mirabeau, foremost in that gigantic 
convulsion, championed their cause with great 


60 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


power. He received his inspiration in favor of 
the race while engaged upon a secret mission on 
which he was sent to Prussia where he met some 
learned Jews, and among them Moses Mendels- 
sohn, for whom he conceived a high admiration. 
In considering “Mendelssohn and the Political 
Reform of the Jews,” Mirabeau in a public mani- 
festo asked: “May it not be said that Mendels- 
sohn’s example, especially the outcome of his ex- 
ertions for the elevation of his brethren, silences 
those who with ignoble bitterness insist that the 
Jews are so contemptible that they cannot be 
formed into a respectable people’” In the same 
treatise he urged the banishment of every humili- 
ating distinction against the Jews and the open- 
ing to them of every avenue for earning a liv- 
ing: “Instead of forbidding them agriculture, 
handicrafts and the mechanical arts, encourage 
them to devote themselves to these occupations.” 
And, again, he lamented “that so highly gifted a 
nation should so long have been kept in a state 
wherein it was impossible for its powers to de- 
velop.” “Every far-sighted man,” he insisted, 
“must rejoice in the acquisition of useful fellow 
citizens from among the Jews.” The Jews also 
came naturally within the scope of the political 
principle by which he was animated. “Nothing,” 
he declared, “should dominate except justice. 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 61 


Nothing should dominate but the rights of each 
man to which all else is subject.” 

Upon his election as a deputy from Provence 
to the States General, Mirabeau was asked by a 
Jew what he proposed to do. He replied: 

“IT will make a human being of you.” 

The French Revolution accomplished religious 
liberty but it did not quite extend to all Jews full 
rights of citizenship. In establishing French 
emancipation Mirabeau himself is a witness to 
the influence of the liberal attitude of America. 
Already civilization was beginning to obtain its 
examples here. Already we had followed inde- 
pendence and liberty, with a government that 
had for foundation equality in practice. Mira- 
beau had the inspiration of Washington, Jeffer- 
son, Madison, and the Adamses, already em- 
bodied in our State and National Constitutions. 

In England there was little relief to the picture 
presented by the continental countries. The 
Jews preceded the Normans on that island by 
centuries and representatives of the race were 
there before the time of the Saxons. All the 
other races, whatever the antagonisms among 
them, seem to have united cordially in the perse- 
cution of the Jews. They were banished under 
Canute but appeared again on the return of some 
degree of tolerance. At the time of the Crusades 
they were persecuted with renewed fury and their 


62 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


money was extorted by the monarchs. King 
John for example threw a Jew into prison and 
demanded a large sum which was not yielded up. 
On each day a tooth of the Jew was pulled and 
the demand renewed. Finally after seven days 
the value of the remainder increased like that 
of the Sibylline Books and the victim paid the 
price the King demanded. The movement 
against the Jews culminated at York where large 
numbers of them took refuge in the castle and 
perished by the sword or were burned. The 
work was completed under King Edward I, who 
banished all who were left of the race, and very 
few traces can be found of the Jew in England 
for more than three hundred years. 

When Cromwell became ruler a new policy 
was adopted and the Jews were permitted to re- 
turn. The grim old Protector could be fierce 
enough in war, but he was far from being with- 
out humanity, and he must have been indeed in- 
human to take part in such brutal persecution as 
that of which the Jews had been the victims. 
Nor would such a course have been more revolt- 
ing to his humanity than to his reason. 

The Hebrew scriptures prophesied the coming 
of a Messiah. Whether Christ was that Messiah 
was a fundamental point of difference between 
the Christian and the theological Jew. Upon 
that point, which involved the fulfillment of the 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 63 


Jewish scriptures, the Jew, at least, had a right to 
an opinion. Could force be added to the argu- 
ment upon either side by having one of the dis- 
putants burn his adversary alive or put him 
upon a rack and tear his limbs from their 
sockets? If the righteousness of the Christian 
religion could be judged by the actions of those 
who professed it, it would hardly appear to be a 
rational way in which to make converts to it to 
indulge in conduct which would disgrace sav- 
ages and which of all things was most abhorrent 
to the divine teachings of Christ Himself. 
With the policy of persecution Cromwell could 
not have the slightest sympathy. On the con- 
trary he declared, “Great is my sympathy with 
this poor people whom God chose and to whom 
He gave His law.” He welcomed Manasseh Ben 
Israel who had undertaken a special mission to 
secure the restoration of the Jews in England. 
As a believer in Christianity Cromwell favored 
the return of the Jews. Such a policy coincided 
also with his sense of the commercial advantage 
of his country. He saw Holland by a policy of 
liberality securing the carrying trade of the 
world, and that very much of it was won through 
the enterprise and commercial spirit of the de- 
spised race. A colony of powerful and wealthy 
Jews was established in London under Crom- 
well’s encouragement and from that day the Jew 


64 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


has been an influential element in the commercial 
life of England. 

The result Cromwell desired was apparently 
reached by connivance rather than by positive 
change of law. It is doubtful whether the law 
had ever actually prohibited the Jews from liv- 
ing in England although it had been rigorously 
enforced with that result in view. Upon that 
point the lawyers had differed. Lord Coke, who 
mingled theology with the law, laid down the 
principle in his Commentaries that infidels were 
perpetual enemies, wholly without rights which 
could be enforced in courts of justice. He held 
that Jews were infidels within the scope of that 
principle. Ata later period the court refused to 
follow Coke where a Jew was endeavoring to 
recover a debt which was justly due him. The 
judges also overruled the claim that a Jew was 
an infidel and perpetual enemy who could not be 
a witness. An enforcement of the “perpetual ene- 
my’ principle would have made it doubtful 
whether even Jews born in England or in its 
possessions became English subjects or that any 
common law rights could be claimed by them. 
As late as the beginning of the American Revo- 
lution the perpetual enemy principle was invoked 
in court before Lord Mansfield but that great 
jurist interrupted counsel about to quote from 
Coke with the statement: 


WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 65 


“Don’t quote the distinction, for the honor of 
Mord: Coke.” 

The court declared the principle to be unsound 
and overruled it; but more than one judge of less 
ability and independence than Mansfield had felt 
bound by Coke’s authority. 

Acts of Parliament from time to time had 
given the Jews a better status. In 1740 they were 
recognized as the king’s subjects in the colonies; 
and it was provided that in taking the oath of ab- 
juration they might omit the words “on the faith 
of a Christian.” By the end of the century 
nearly all discrimination against them except in 
their right to enjoy political privileges had 
been swept away. But they were compelled to 
wait until the coming of another generation be- 
fore civil disabilities were completely removed. 
When a measure to that end was pending in Par- 
liament, but which was not destined at that time 
to succeed, one of its antagonists sarcastically 
proposed that it should be brought forward on 
Good Friday. Macaulay, who generally showed 
himself the splendid champion of justice, gave a 
most pertinent retort: 

“We know of no day fitter for terminating 
long hostilities and repairing cruel wrongs,” he 
said, “than the day on which the religion of 
mercy was founded. We know of no day fitter 
for blotting out from the statute book the last 


66 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


traces of intolerance than the day on which the 
spirit of intolerance produced the foulest of all 
judicial murders, the day on which the list of the 
victims of intolerance, that noble list wherein 
Socrates and More are enrolled, was glorified by 
a yet greater and holier name.” 


Of all the countries in modern Europe the one 
in which the Jew was first treated with liberality, 
was Holland. The Dutch signalized their inde- 
pendence by throwing their gates open to the 
persecuted of all races and creeds. At once the 
Jews swarmed into Holland from all the other 
countries of Europe. The commercial city of 
Amsterdam presented a spectacle where men of 
all religions were tolerated and found themselves 
secure in their persons and property. By one 
writer of that day it was stigmatized as “a com- 
mon harbor” of all opinions and of all heresies; 
by another as a “cage of unclean birds.” Andrew 
Marvell, known in history as the incorruptible 
friend of John Milton, relieved his outraged heart 
in verse: 


Holland, that scarce deserves the name of land, 
As but the offscouring of the British sand, 
And so much earth as was contributed 

By English pilots when they heaved the lead, 
Or what by the ocean’s slow alluvion fell 

Of shipwrecked cockle and the muscle shell— 
This indigested vomit of the sea 

Fell to the Dutch by just propriety, 


, WHEN OPPRESSION RULED 67 


Sure when religion did itself embark 

And from the East would Westward steer its ark, 
It struck, and splitting on this unknown ground 
Each one thence pillaged the first piece he found. 
Hence Amsterdam, Turk-Christian-Pagan-Jew, 
Staple of sects and mint of schism grew, 

That bank of conscience, where not one so strange 
Opinion but finds credit and exchange. 


The noble outstanding example that courage- 
ous little Holland set must ever be considered 
reverently here, for Holland’s high hearted hu- 
manity was our land’s earliest inspiration. 

In brief is here presented the black record of 
proscription and persecution throughout Western 
Europe over the dark Middle Ages, showing that, 
until the interposition of Holland, there was no- 
where an abiding shelter for the Jews. Here are 
shown, too, the tenacity with which prejudice ad- 
hered to its evil courses and the slow amelioration 
which finally brought in the better order. Until 
the amelioration came after a long struggle there 
appears to have been, with the honorable excep- 
tion of Holland, a uniform attitude of hostility. 
There was, indeed, greater cruelty among peoples 
who were willing to resort to physical torture. 
But everywhere there was the same intolerance. 
Everywhere Jews were excluded from those 
occupations that were essential in their struggle 
for the necessities of existence. Everywhere they 
were the objects of obloquy and contempt. Is it 
short of miraculous that any race should have 


68 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


survived such treatment and retained any vestige 
of humanity? Their extremity is recorded with 
pathos in the solemn lines of Byron: 
Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast, 
How shall ye flee away and be at rest? 


The wild dove hath her nest, the fox his cave, 
Mankind their country—Israel but the grave. 


CHAPTER V 
PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 


THE first group of Jews to reach what is now 
the United States came from Europe by way of 
Brazil. They had fled from Portugal to escape 
persecution in that country, which was Spanish- 
like in its cruelty. If Holland had persisted in 
the campaign which she entered upon in Brazil, 
and succeeded in establishing her authority 
there, doubtless tolerable conditions would have 
resulted for the Jews, and this particular first 
migration to us would not have occurred. But 
after a short and ineffective attempt, Holland 
had withdrawn and left the Portuguese in posses- 
sion. The treatment of the Jew, which Portugal 
had put in practice at home, she continued in her 
colony. The barbarous persecutions which she 
meted out to them, drove them to seek a new 
refuge, and they landed at New Netherland. 

Thus, there arrived the original American 
Jew,—not seeking gold or lands, or with the pur- 
pose of establishing a government of his own, 
but simply fleeing from oppression. The migra- 
tion was as free from any gainful purpose as was 
that of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

Even in Spain, the most relentless enemies of 
the Jews had not surpassed those in Portugal. 

69 


70 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


There is no more cruel chapter in the history of 
Jewish persecution than Portugal wrote in 1739. 

Antonio José da Silva was the notable poet and 
dramatist of Portugal at that time. He was 
born in Brazil of Portuguese parentage. His 
father and mother had both fled to the latter coun- 
try in order to escape the persecution at home and 
they were treated with such cruelty there, that 
after a time they preferred to brave the persecu- 
tion of the mother land and returned to Portugal, 
taking their son with them. The plays of the 
young dramatist were full of what critics call 
“Aristophanic wit’? and he was very popular 
with the people. 

But there came on a frenzy of religious pas- 
sion and the poet was seized and put to torture. 
He was burned, and, to make the torture more 
exquisite, his mother and wife were pinioned 
near him and compelled to witness his sufferings. 
The brief address he made in his defence is su- 
perbly worthy of preservation. 


“I am,” he said, “a follower of a faith God-given. Ac- 
cording to your own teachings, God once loved this re- 
ligion. I believe He still loves it, but because you main- 
tain He no longer turns upon it the light of His counte- 
nance, you condemn to death those convinced God had 
not withdrawn His grace from what He once favored. 
You demand that we become Christians, yet you are far 
from being Christians yourselves. Be at least men. Act 
toward us as reasonably as if you had no religion at all 
to guide you and no revelation for your enlightenment.” 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 71 


That night, it is said, there was produced one 
of his operas at the opera house at Lisbon, and 
the people applauded the happy epigrams of their 
favorite poet, who had that day been sacrificed. 

Spanish and Portuguese persecution of the 
Jew showed itself not merely in Brazil, but in 
Mexico, Peru and other parts of the southern 
world. It was a happy inspiration that led him 
to come northward, where a different destiny 
than he had ever enjoyed was awaiting him. 

The first company of Jews to come to America 
were twenty-seven in number. They were desti- 
tute and hopeless. Their personal effects were 
seized by the ship owners to pay for the expenses 
of their passage and in addition two of their 
number were taken into custody to be held as 
hostages until all had been paid. 

Peter Stuyvesant was the Governor of New 
Netherland. He had no affection for the Jews. 
He was sufficiently burdened with trouble, with 
the Indians pressing upon him and the New 
England Colonies asserting claims against him, 
and, although he was most martial in his disposi- 
tion, he thought it prudent to compromise with his 
enemies. But he wanted nothing to do with the 
Jews. He urged upon his home government 
that none of the Jewish nation should be per- 
mitted to “infest”? New Netherland. All un- 
conscious that he was laying the foundation of 


72 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


the mightiest Hebrew city the world had ever 
seen, he blindly resisted the distinction that fate 
was conferring upon him. 

Holland, however, assumed a liberal policy. 
It was the same policy that she enforced with 
regard to the Jews who swarmed across her bor- 
ders from other countries, and it was altogether 
likely that she would not set it aside in one of her 
colonies. And in addition to the general policy 
of Holland there was a special reason why the 
Jews should not be ill treated in New Netherland. 
Members of that race had large investments in 
the West India Company and some had been 
chosen to the Board of Directors. The Governor 
was informed by the home government that the 
course he recommended was “inconsistent with 
reason and justice” and it was declared to be the 
law that the Jews were to be allowed to “reside 
and trade in New Netherland.” ‘There was the 
one condition annexed, that they should have the 
rights of residence and trading “provided the poor 
among them shall be supported by their own na- 
tion.” This condition has been followed by the 
shining result of societies to care for the orphan, 
for the sick and the poor and to provide educa- 
tion, that reflect the highest honor upon the race. 

One of the first Jews to reach New Netherland 
showed himself possessed of the spirit of John 
Hampden. Mr. Louis Marshall, who is a most 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 73 


competent judge, calls Asser Levy, who was this 
immigrant, “the protagonist of Jewish rights and 
liberties in America.” ‘Time and again he re- 
sented the discrimination which Stuyvesant put 
upon his race. There was a provision that the 
burghers should stand guard, but Stuyvesant, al- 
though warned by his Dutch directors who “ob- 
served with displeasure certain of his actions,” 
declared that this requirement did not apply to 
Jews, and, instead of their standing guard, they 
were subjected to a special tax. Asser Levy re- 
fused to pay the tax, just as Hampden resisted 
the ship money imposition. Levy was informed 
that it was imposed upon Jews alone because 
they did not stand guard. He replied: “I have 
not asked to be exempted, I demand the right to 
stand guard.” He could not be permitted to do 
that because, they told him, he was not a citizen. 
“T will become one,” he replied. And immediately 
he entered into a vigorous contest for naturaliza- 
tion, and he kept up the battle until he was 
naturalized. 

He thus became the first Jewish citizen of 
America, and made true the sententious charac- 
terization of Mr. Marshall, who says aptly of 
this first Jewish immigration that it “will serve 
equally as an inspiration to the Jew, and as a 
valuable lesson to fellow-citizens of other denomi- 
nations, to become better acquainted with the 


74 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Jewish Pilgrim Fathers who, when the in- 
habitants of what was destined to become the cos- 
mopolis consisted of a mere handful, landed here 
as the pioneers of Jewish settlement. They were 
poor and humble, as were the Fathers of the 
Knickerbockers. They were unfortunate, as were 
most of the dwellers in the infant colony. They 
were imbued with a deep and abounding trust in 
God, a virtue possessed by the greater part of our 
early American colonists. They differed in one 
respect only—they were the victims of the preju- 
dice and of the intolerance of the entire world.” 
Two years before the arrival of the first Jew 
in New Netherland, Rhode Island enacted that 
“all men of whatever nation soever they may be, 
that shall be received inhabitants of any of the 
towns, shall have the same privileges as English- 
men, any law to the contrary notwithstanding.” 
The action of this colony reflected the attitude 
of Roger Williams, who of all the early colonists 
of this country was not surpassed in toleration in 
his treatment of men who differed with him in 
race and creed. Under this liberal sanction 
Newport became the favorite refuge of the Jews 
in North America, and they honorably associated 
themselves with the development of the town. 
It was held that they could not be admitted to 
citizenship on account of an old law, which pro- 
hibited ‘“‘admission free to this colony” to those 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 75 


who did not profess the Christian religion. But 
the Jews were protected in their property rights, 
and in carrying on trade were given equal free- 
dom with the other members of the community. 

One of them, Aaron Lopez, engaged in com- 
merce with great success, and came to be recog- 
nized as the leading merchant of New England. 
It is said that he had thirty ships constantly em- 
ployed in trade with the most distant parts of the 
world. 

The attitude of the Puritans was generally not 
one of toleration, and it might be expected that 
they would have shown little friendship for the 
Jew. But historical research made by a Jewish 
writer* acquits the Puritan of ungenerous treat- 
ment of the members of the race. “If the Puri- 
tans’ conduct toward the Quaker was harsh and 
intolerant,’ declares this review, “their behavior 
toward the Jews who strayed into their midst 
was, on the other hand, tolerant and indulgent. 
A thorough research does not disclose one single 
case of anything bordering on persecution of the 
Jew by the Puritan.” This is a striking con- 
clusion in view of the fact that the general atti- 
tude of the New England Puritan of that day was 
not at all one of religious toleration. 

It was in the commonly accepted spirit that 
Governor Winslow wrote to Governor Winthrop: 





*Joseph Lebowitch, in Menorah Magazine, January, 1903. 


76 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


“Speaking of universal tolerance I utterly abhor 
it as such as would make us odious to all Chris- 
tian Commonwealths.” In generous contrast to 
this sentiment is the treatment accorded Solomon 
Franco, who had found his way into Massachu- 
setts in 1647, and, failing to realize upon a pri- 
vate claim, was left without means of sus- 
tenance. The Governor and Council liberally 
gave a grant out of the public treasury of six 
shillings a week “for ten weeks until he can get 
his passage into Holland so as he goeth within 
that time.” Franco, it is believed by Jewish his- 
torical authorities, was the first of his race in 
Boston. Shortly afterwards Judah Monis, a Jew, 
became an instructor at Harvard* where he re- 
mained for forty years. But he was baptized 
with much ceremony before his appointment and 
he married a Christian. 

The steps by which the Jews secured an 
equality of rights and of political power in the 
various colonies and states, form an interesting 
chapter in our history. They appear nowhere to 
have been ill-treated. In some portions of the 
country they met with prejudice and discrimina- 
tion, but on the whole they found America dur- 
ing the colonial period a paradise compared with 
what Europe had been. Maryland appears to 
have triumphed over prejudice with the greatest 





*APPENDIX: ‘Pioneers of Education.”’ 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 77 


difficulty. The struggle over religious liberty 
there continued long after the adoption of the Na- 
tional Constitution. One who did not first declare 
his belief in the Christian religion could not hold 
office or take oath in that state, and by one 
act it was prescribed “that if any person shall 
hereafter by writing or speaking blaspheme God, 
or deny our Savior to be the Son of God, or shall 
deny the Holy Trinity,” the first offense shall be 
punished by boring through the tongue, a second 
offense by branding upon the forehead and for 
a third offense “death without benefit of clergy.” 
A bill to remove disability, known as the “Jew 
Bill,” drafted by William Pinkney, said to be act- 
ing under the inspiration of Washington, was 
defeated session after session, and finally passed 
the House of Delegates in 1825 by one plurality 
with nearly half the members absent. 

It is refreshing to read the history of colonial 
Newport, and to witness the rich development 
that came from its human atmosphere and the 
responsiveness to its broad spirit of toleration. 
There were many ports as well or better situated, 
and yet the influence of its liberality is strikingly 
seen in the prosperity which it attained. Moses 
Lopez preceded his brother Aaron to Newport. 
New Netherland had become New York, and 
Moses Lopez was a citizen under British law. 
He and his brother established factories, built 


78 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ships and conducted a wide range of industry. 
They did not forget the duties of citizenship in 
their pursuit of commerce. 

One of the brothers, in concert with Christians, 
founded a seminary, and Moses joined with 
another Hebrew, Jacob Josephs, in helping to 
establish a community library. Jews flocked to 
Newport from every port. Some came from 
Spain, some from Portugal, others from Jamaica 
and they all found welcome there. As was de- 
clared by Governor Cozzens of Rhode Island 
in an historical review half a century or more 
ago, Newport by 1760 was attracting world-wide 
attention. “Hundreds of wealthy Israelites, dis- 
tinguished merchants,” he said, “removed here 
and entered largely into business.’ In the sweep 
of their operations they conducted seventeen fac- 
tories, making sperm oil and candles, carried on 
many distilleries, then not under the ban, but in 
which they had fashionable competition in New 
England, sugar refineries, rope walks, and many 
large furniture factories, shipping most of the 
things they made out of the country. 

In 1770 seventeen West India ships entered 
the port on one day. Whaling was a leading 
pursuit. The prosperity of the port was such 
that it promised to become the foremost center 
of commerce in the country. It never attained 
that distinction, but it did achieve a fine success, 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 79 


not merely in the prosperity that came, but in the 
reputation for sound business enterprise and in- 
tegrity that it established; and the Jews played 
a leading part in it all. 

One of the earliest Presidents of Yale College, 
Ezra Stiles, who had long been a minister of the 
church in Newport, said of them: “They are 
marvels for giving help.” It is worth while re- 
calling the tribute which Longfellow paid in his 
lines “In the Jewish cemetery at Newport:” 


How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves, 
Close by the street of this fair seaport town, 

Silent beside the never-silent waves, 
At rest in all this moving up and down! 


The very names recorded here are strange, 
Of foreign accent, and different climes; 
Alvares and Rivera interchange. 
With Abraham and Jacob of old times. 


Gone are the living, but the dead remain, 
And not neglected; for a hand unseen, 
Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, 
Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. 


How came they here? What burst of Christian hate 
What persecution, merciless and blind, 
Drove o’er the sea—that desert desolate— 
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind? 
Pride and humiliation, hand in hand, 
Walked with them through the world where’er they, 
went ; 
Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, 
And yet unshaken as the continent. 
For in the background figures vague and vast, 
Of patriarchs and prophets, rose sublime; 
And all the great traditions of the Past 
They saw reflected in the coming time! 


80 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Philadelphia as the seat of the revolutionary 
government was a social center and a most in- 
teresting town at that period. Dr. S. Weir 
Mitchell gives a delightful glimpse of the town 
in his “Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.” Among 
his heroines is a witty young Jewess, and she is 
shown as one of the foremost of the young 
women in society there. She is described by Dr. 
Mitchell as “the elder Miss Franks, who was rich 
and charming enough to have many men at her 
feet despite her Hebrew blood.” How little her 
Hebrew blood operated as a handicap is shown 
by the way in which the author continually recurs 
to her. ‘“‘As to Miss Franks, she hates to be 
called Becky,’ says another of the heroines; 
“when I say I hope to see Mr. Washington 
hanged she declares he is too fine a man, and she 
would only hang the ugly ones.” And later a 
letter is introduced into the book, written by Miss 
Franks, giving an account of what is going on 
in the British headquarters in New York, for 
Miss Franks was a Loyalist, very naturally, be- 
cause her father was the financial representative 
of the King in the colonies, as had been his 
father before him. She was not regarded as a 
Tory, but as a foreign unfortunate and part of 
the English régime. Her name was taken by the 
author from real life. The members of her 


PIONEERS WHO OVERCAME PREJUDICE 81 


family had long been well known and they gave 
strong support to the cause of the revolution. 
One of them, David Franks, was Aide de Camp 
to Benedict Arnold, and in an inquiry conducted 
by hard-headed Continental officers his loyalty 
was proven to their satisfaction. Another of the 
family, Colonel Isaac Franks, was upon Wash- 
ington’s staff. They were brave men in battle. 
They. were cousins of Rebecca Franks and 
cousins also to the wife of Haym Salomon, an- 
other Jew, who was one of the most interesting 
men of the Revolutionary period. 

Not less distinguished was the patriotic Gratz 
family, which had another Rebecca in the social 
life of Philadelphia. It was reported of her that 
Washington Irving came under her spell and 
that she dismissed his suit with the pathetic 
words: “Race and religion outlast youth, and life 
is better as a happy remembrance than a mourned 
reality.” 

Whether it is true, as was said, that the Rebecca 
in Ivanhoe was this same Rebecca, selected by 
Scott as a tribute to his friend Irving, there is no 
doubt that in the later colonial period the Jews, 
though far from numerous, were as prominent in 
the social life of some of the colonies as they 
came to be in the fighting in the Revolution. 
They were not merely prominent in Newport and 
Philadelphia, but elsewhere, as in South Caro- 


82 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


lina, where the city of Charleston boasted that 
of her 600 Jews not one was a Tory. 

The British by official proclamation declared 
one of the Jews of Georgia, Benjamin Sheftall, 
to be a “very great rebel,’ and when his 
mother died, the city of Savannah expressed its 
sympathy as a mark of appreciation of Sheftall 
by providing that a public street should be broad- 
ened so that the burial place of his mother might 
come within the city’s care. 


CHAPTER VI 
SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 


AT the time of the Revolution the Jews formed 
a relatively small portion of our population. 
They were almost negligible in the count and this 
small minority rendered service of great value. 
They contributed generously of their means, but, 
as President Cleveland said, “that feature of 
their service, splendid though it be, was not the 
greatest.” They gave valuable help and counsel 
in administration and also did effective fighting. 
The Jews were found in the contingents from 
nearly all the colonies and their records as 
soldiers were brilliant. 

The fundamental issues involved in the war of 
independence made an appeal to men of all 
classes and of all ages. Young men may have 
been stirred as in other great conflicts by the 
promptings of an innate martial disposition, but 
the man of years was found on the fighting line 
as well as the boy. A member of the family of 
Gomez, who was not quite sixty-nine, was told he 
was too old, and his reply was, “I can stop a bul- 
let just as well as any other man.” Details con- 
cerning the history of the individual soldiers are 
far less available than in our modern wars, but 
records enough survive to show that the Jewish 
soldiers played a brave part in the Revolution. 

83 


84 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


The Jews were almost without exception loyal to 
the patriot cause; only a very few of them were 
Tories, and that chiefly on account of their off- 
cial relations which at the time existed with 
England. This fidelity to the cause of the Col- 
onies was exceptional. 

It must be remembered that it was a time of 
loyalist hegiras. Some shiploads of Tories sailed 
from Boston for Halifax with Lord Howe and 
the swarm of royalists was augmented from 
other ports. 

Since there was no general classification of 
population which will enable us to determine 
with exactness what the different races did in 
the Revolution, we may make only inferences 
from the outstanding examples afforded by men 
of that race. 

Mordecai Sheftall of Georgia, spurning temp- 
tations to renounce the cause of the Revolution, 
became Commissary General at the South, when 
ammunition was hardly to be had at any price 
and when even food was scarce. The place 
he held was a most trying one. Sheftall, how- 
ever, did his work well, and in addition to being 
Commissary he took part in the fighting. He 
did heroic things at the siege of Savannah, was 
almost mortally wounded, and he put his salary 
at the disposal of the doctors in order that they 
might buy medicines for his comrades. 


SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 85 


The names of Gratz, Franks, Sampson, Jacobs, 
Bush, Mordecai, Levy, Moses, Meyer, Phillips, 
Seixas and Hays, Mendes and Dela Mott, 
Etting, Cohen and Benjamin barely suggest 
the list. Their service was most honorable. 
Manuel Mordecai Noah of North Carolina was a 
man of wealth. At the outset he was ready to 
take part in the fighting. He served upon the 
staff of General Marion in the brilliant cam- 
paigns of that officer. He afterwards served 
upon the staff of Washington. He was credited 
with a fortune of £20,000, and he turned it over 
to the use of the country. He held his fortune 
as well as his life at the disposal of the cause. 

When bills of credit were issued in 1776, from 
which the element of credit was greatly lacking, 
the names of Jews were conspicuous among the 
subscribers. Among them were Benjamin Levy 
of Philadelphia and Benjamin Jacobs of New 
York, and among subscribers of subsequent 
issues may be found the names of Samuel Lyon 
of New York, and Isaac Moses and Hyman 
Levy of Philadelphia. These bills made little ap- 
peal to one who desired solidity in his invest- 
ments, and they presented far less attraction to 
the speculator than opportunities in private busi- 
ness which existed at that time. But the money 
was needed to support the army of Washington 


86 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


in the field and that was the controlling purpose 
which animated the giver. 

Haym Salomon was one of the most remark- 
able men of that period. Outside of the gov- 
erning circles of the country he was little known, 
even in the time of the Revolution, for he was 
modest and unassuming and what he did was 
brought to light by others. He easily ranked next 
to Robert Morris as the man who made it pos- 
sible to finance the war. 

Haym Salomon was a Polish Jew; his family 
were cultivated people; he was liberally educated, 
had a command of several languages and was 
well trained for almost any administrative work. 
He preceded his famous fighting countrymen, 
Pulaski and Kosciusko, to this country and 
when the Revolution began, he showed that he 
had imbibed strongly the sentiment in favor of 
independence. He was captured by the British 
at the outbreak of the war and sentenced to pris- 
on. Regaining his liberty, he was soon after- 
wards arrested again on the suspicion that he 
was attempting to carry out a plan ascribed to 
Washington, to destroy the British ships and 
supplies in the harbor of New York. He was 
tried by a court martial and with little delay sen- 
tenced to be shot. In some way he made his 
escape,—it is said, by the very practical means 
of advancing ready money to the jailers—and he 


SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 87 


soon found his way to Philadelphia. He at- 
tempted to secure a commission in the army, but 
his experience in war was not such as to over- 
come the objection which Washington and his 
staff had to foreign officers. 

He then applied to Robert Morris, who had 
become the financier of the Revolution, and there 
he had less difficulty, for he possessed the obvious 
qualification of a foreign acquaintance, was in 
possession of considerable means himself and 
was of a patent aptitude for finance. He was at 
once set to work by Morris to handle public funds 
and their negotiation. He was chosen as Pay- 
master General of the army and navy of France 
in America, and as the financial adviser to the 
French Minister and in many important financial 
transactions he acted as the agent of other Euro- 
pean governments. 

He took a foremost part in transferring the 
subsidies of France and Holland to this country; 
and since there was always a pressing demand 
for money, he negotiated advances upon these 
subsidies before they actually arrived. Refer- 
ences to Salomon like the following may be 
found in the Diary of Robert Morris: “TI sent for 
Salomon and desired him to try in every way he 
could to raise money.” And again: “Salomon, 
the broker, came, and I asked him to leave no 
stone unturned to find out money and the means 


88 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


by which we can obtain it.” It was learned after 
his death that for the very important service he 
rendered as Paymaster General of the French 
army and navy in America he would not accept 
any compensation, and that he also received no 
compensation for the support that he induced the 
Spanish sovereign to give, and indeed that serv- 
ice itself was a secret. But this was by no means 
all. 

The members of the Continental Congress at 
Philadelphia were many of them far from their 
homes and were unable to get remittances of 
money. ‘They were upon the verge of starva- 
tion. James Madison wrote to Edmund Ran- 
dolph: “I have for some time been a pensioner 
on the favor of Haym Salomon, a Jew Broker.” 
Randolph knew Haym Salomon, as the record 
discloses that he himself had received assistance 
from him. The cynic, however, is apt to ask 
what interest was paid for the favors which 
Salomon bestowed. That soon appears; for 
Madison again writes to Randolph, “I am re- 
lapsing fast into distress. The case of my breth- 
ren’—evidently referring to the Continental 
Congress and Continental Army brethren—‘‘is 
equally alarming. I am almost ashamed to ac- 
knowledge my wants so incessantly to you but 
they begin to be so urgent that it is impossible to 
suppress them. The kindness of our little friend 


SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 89 


in Front Street, near the Coffee House, is a fund 
that will preserve me from extremities, but I 
never resort to it without great mortification— 
as he absolutely rejects all recompense. The 
price of money is so usurious that he thinks it 
ought to be extorted from none of those who do 
not aim at speculations. To a necessitous dele- 
gate he gratuitously spares a supply out of his 
private stock.” 

It was surely a noble company of statesmen 
and soldiers to whom Haym Salomon extended 
the helping hand in the time of their distress. 
Among them were not merely James Madison 
and Edmund Randolph but also Thomas Jeffer- 
son, Arthur Lee, Mifflin, Quaker President of 
the Congress, St. Clair, the first Governor of the 
North West Territory, General Steuben, In- 
structor General of the Continental forces, and, 
saddest of all to chronicle, the financier of the 
Revolution, worn-out Robert Morris, with his 
fortune consumed and himself with it in the 
public service. Haym Salomon himself died a 
poor man. It was through his very patriotism 
and the unstinted use of his own fortune that 
misfortune found the chance to crush him. He 
invested heavily in the securities of the Govern- 
ment, or what was called the Government, issued 
as they were under a great variety of names— 
“Loan Office Certificates,” “Treasury Certifi- 


90 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


cates,’ “Commission Certificates,” ‘Continental 
Certificates,’ ‘Virginia State Certificates,” 
“Robert Morris Advances,” “Special Loans,” 
and the total of all of them rose above $650,000. 
The aggregate of Salomon’s advances to the 
Government was probably greater than any for- 
tune in the country at that time. It is not diff- 
cult to see what the public duty in such a situa- 
tion requires; but the difference between the duty 
that is only seen and the duty that is discharged 
is often very great. Not one penny of the gigan- 
tic debt of honor which the country owed him 
has ever been paid. Congress has grown elo- 
quent over it. It has toasted the hero’s memory 
and proposed a memorial medal but the debt re- 
mains unpaid to this day. Two Congressional 
Committees, a half century afterwards, made a 
full investigation of the subject and they for- 
mally declared that although Salomon “endorsed 
a great portion of those bills of exchange for the 
amount of the loans and subsidies our govern- 
ment obtained in Europe of which he negotiated 
the entire sums and the execution of which duty 
occupied a great portion of his valuable time, 
still there was charged scarcely a fractional per- 
centage to the United States.” 

Shortly after the end of the war Salomon died 
suddenly with no near relatives in the country 
except very young children. He left no will and 


, i 


SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 91 


his estate was administered by strangers. His 
heirs could find few traces of his property and 
they applied to Congress two generations after- 
ward for payment of what was due his estate. 
The investigations to which I have referred 
were conducted by the Senate Committee on 
_ Claims of the Twenty-Ninth Congress and by a 
House Committee of the Thirtieth Congress. 
The reports of both of these committees agreed 
as to the valuable character of Salomon’s serv- 
ice and his advances to the government, but the 
sums recommended were never paid. 

The Saturday Courier of Philadelphia of Octo- 
ber 30, 1847, contains a minutely detailed article 
entitled “Financiers of the Revolution Number 
One” which quotes from “a manuscript letter yet 
extant in the treasury department,” in which the 
superintendent writing of conditions in the Revo- 
lution says: “The treasury was so much in ar- 
rears to the servants in the public offices that 
many of them could not without payment per- 
form their duties, but must have gone to jail for 
debts they had contracted to enable them to live.” 
The article cites a document presented to a Com- 
mittee of Congress by the Bank of North Amer- 
ica, the first and only bank chartered by the Revo- 
lutionary Congress. This document shows that 
funds from time to time were paid on Haym 


92 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Salomon’s account to the soldiers and statesmen 
whose names I have already given. 

Thus Salomon’s good deeds, brought out long 
after his death, convict him both of humanity 
and patriotism. One of the finest touches in the 
history of that heroic time is seen in the spectacle 
of this Jew extending without recompense the 
helping hand to the Revolutionary generals and 
statesmen in the time of their sore distress. 
Haym Salomon offsets the reproach of Shylock, 
with the difference that Haym Salomon was a 
Jew in the flesh while Shylock was a stage Jew, 
offspring of the imagination of a great poet. 
Nor were the services of Salomon by any means 
confined to private munificence, if private munifi- 
cence it can be called, which so vitally affected 
the means of living of the men who were direct- 
ing the Revolution. His account at the Bank of 
North America, which was far larger during 
that period than that of any other customer, 
shows that there was charged to him as paid to 
Robert Morris, the Public Financier, more than 
two hundred thousand dollars. The net indebted- 
ness of the country to Haym Salomon appears 
to have been about four hundred thousand dol- 
lars. Over a century afterwards it was pro- 
posed to found a national university in his honor, 
using for that purpose a part of the immense 


SUPPORTING THE WAR FOR INDEPENDENCE 93 


amount of interest due upon his advances to the 
government. That proposal came to naught. 

If Haym Salomon were not a Jew who is 
there who would deny him the title of patriot? 
The services of this man make all of us today 
his debtors. It would be the better part to do 
justice to this Jew who came to us from Poland, 
than to be crying out for the persecution of his 
race. 


CHAPTER VII 
LEADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 


AFTER the winning of the war of the revolu- 
tion there were many problems of the first mag- 
nitude bequeathed by it, as by all wars, which 
drew heavily upon the resources of the people; 
and there was no central government to deal with 
these problems. There was no central public 
opinion. Newspapers did not circulate beyond 
the borders of the state, and often not beyond 
the borders of the town, in which they were 
printed. There were few men who took a con- 
tinental point of view. Nearly all men were for 
their own localities and thought only of them, 
and had it not been for the influence of a man 
of the unequalled authority of Washington, a 
long period of chaos might have reigned and the 
separate states, even if their independence had 
been maintained, would have reached union only 
over a very thorny road. 

But Washington had the supreme regard of 
his countrymen. Congress recorded the preva- 
lent opinion in the vote by which it conveyed to 
him the assurance that he possessed the love 
and confidence of his fellow citizens, and that his 
fame would be transmitted to posterity and his 
virtues would animate remotest ages. However 

94 


LEADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 95 


laudatory the sentiment, this vote doubtless ex- 
pressed the sincere opinion of his countrymen. 

Washington was profoundly impressed with 
a sense of the necessity of union. He very clearly 
saw the impossibility of achieving important re- 
sults without union. “Tlliberality, jealousy,” he 
said, “and local policy mix too much in our coun- 
sels. A confederation appears to me to be little 
more than a shadow without substance. Our 
resources are ample and increasing; but while 
they are grudgingly applied, or not applied at all, 
we give a vital stab to public faith, and will sink, 
in the eye of Europe, into contempt.” 

The difficult work of establishing the constitu- 
tion and the first amendments was finally accom- 
plished. Along with other signal things one thing 
emerged which was the outcome of the battle of 
the centuries which had been hotly waged about 
the Jew. Religious freedom was established. 

Dr. Max Nordau, an eminent Hebrew, avers that 
the freedom of the Jews in Europe resulted from 
the French Revolution, the logic of which de- 
manded freedom. “Themen of 1792 emancipated 
us,” he declared, “only for the sake of principle.” 

Other writers of high authority, and upon bet- 
ter grounds, trace the emancipation to the Vir- 
ginia enactment of religious liberty, for that act, 
passed in 1785, after a bitter and long continued 
contest, antedated by years any possible result 


96 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


from the French Revolution—and even Mirabeau 
pronounces this judgment. It may be readily 
comprehended how the Virginia Act exercised a 
perceptible influence upon France and through 
France upon European opinion broadly. Thomas 
Jefferson was then our minister to France and he 
would naturally have brought the Virginia Act 
to the attention of European statesmen. He 
says, indeed, in a letter written to James Madi- 
son in December, 1786: 

“The Virginia Act for Religious Freedom has. 
been received with infinite approbation in Eu- 
rope and propagated with enthusiasm. I do not 
mean by governments but by the individuals 
which compose them. It has been translated into 
French and Italian, has been sent to most of the 
courts of Europe. It is inserted in the new En- 
cyclopedia and is appearing in most of the publi- 
cations respecting America. It is honorable for us 
to have produced the first legislature who had the 
courage to declare that the reason of man may be 
trusted with the formation of his own opinion.” 

Virginia’s act, thus happily presented to Eu- 
rope, was in consonance with developed sentiment 
beyond her own state borders, though it cannot 
be reckoned the origin of the principle it con- 
tained; yet a further happy circumstance it was 
that her spokesman was opportunely at the very 
center of European impressionability, and that 


LEADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 97 


spokesman, one who in his last testament willed 
that in his lasting epitaph it should be inscribed, 
not that Thomas Jefferson was President of the 
United States, but “Author of The Statute of 
Virginia for Religious Freedom.” 

Showing how close in heart on this one vital 
principle the leading colonies were, it is notable 
that eight years before Virginia’s act was finally 
passed a similar provision had been inserted in 
the New York State constitution, while, as early 
as 1780, the constitution of Massachusetts estab- 
lished the principle of religious liberty beyond 
the power of any legislature to repeal. The 
Massachusetts declaration was: 


“No subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in 
his person, liberty or estate, for worshipping God in the 
manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his 
own conscience.” 

This declaration and similar ones, as those in 
the Virginia Act and in other states, culminated 
in the Constitution of the United States, which 
prohibited any religious test in any official oath, 
and the first amendment almost contempora- 
neous with it prescribed that: 


“Congress shall make no law respecting the establish- 
ment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise there- 
‘epi 


Thus whether it was Massachusetts, Rhode 
Island, Virginia or New York that blazed the 
trail, the United States clearly pointed the path- 


98 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


way to Europe. Regardless of the calendar and 
even of her own authentic claims, it has always 
been agreeable to the New England disposition 
to exalt Virginia’s noble progressiveness at that 
early period. Simeon E. Baldwin, a Connecticut 
publicist and a high authority, writes :* 

“Virginia, in 1786, in a statute drafted by 
Jefferson, proclaimed it ‘to be a natural right of 
mankind that religious opinions shall never off- 
set civil capacities, and that no man can be com- 
pelled to support any religious worship.’ This 
declaration was circulated widely in southern 
Europe. Madison had defended it in the legisla- 
ture with his accustomed vigor. 

“Next came the Ordinance of 1787, to lay the 
foundations of government for the vast territory 
out of which sprang the commonwealths sur- 
rounding the great lakes. It has not the ring, 
upon this point, of the statute of Virginia, but it 
does declare that no person shall ever be mo- 
lested on account of his mode of worship or reli- 
gious sentiments, so long as he keeps the public 
peace. 

“That same summer the convention that 
framed our Constitution was sitting with closed 
doors in Philadelphia. Its work was, no doubt, 
in the main, a rearrangement of existing mate- 
rials. It took American institutions and put 





*“Modern Political Institutions,” Little, Brown & Co., Publishers. 


is i i 


LEADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM ao 


them in a new order and combination. But it 
did more. Every delegate came from a state 
where some civil distinctions had always flowed 
from religious distinctions. There was probably 
not more than one who would not have consid- 
ered himself an adherent of the Christian faith. 
They found an unbroken current of authority in 
favor of uniting civil and religious institutions, 
to some extent in every government. And yet 
at the call of the youngest of them, Charles 
Pinckney of South Carolina, fresh from his law 
studies in the Inner Temple, they were ready to 
take this great step forward, by forever prohibit- 
ing all religious tests for office or public trust, 
under the United States. He made the proposi- 
tion a month after the enactment of the ordi- 
nance of 1787. The committee of detail to which 
it was referred took no notice of the suggestion 
in their report; but Pinckney secured its adop- 
tion as an amendment, and it stands as the close 
of the last article but one. 

“In advocating the ratification of the Consti- 
tution in the South Carolina convention, a year 
later, he insisted on this feature as all important. 
There was, he said, but one great government in 
Europe which provided for the security of pri- 
vate rights, and that withheld from part of its 
subjects the equal enjoyment of their religious 
liberties. Avoiding this error, we were to ‘be the 


100 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


first perfectly free people the world has ever 
seen.’ 

“The provision against religious tests for of- 
fice left Congress still free to set up a religious 
establishment. One may well fail without the 
other. Such has been the slow course of English 
history. New Hampshire, where Roman Catho- 
lics were debarred from office until 1877, was the 
first to propose a further guaranty of religious 
liberty as an amendment to the Constitution. 
Virginia and New York acted promptly in the 
same direction, and it was for want of this, 
among other provisions, that North Carolina re- 
fused to ratify the constitution at all. 

“At the first session of the first Congress, such 
an amendment was proposed to the States. It 
was set third in a list of twelve, preceded by one 
to regulate the number of representatives in the 
lower house, and another to prevent Congress 
from increasing the pay of its members after 
their election. The States impatiently swept 
both of these away, and so put at the head of the 
ten which they ratified the provision against 
church establishments and church domination— 
fitly placed first, because the most important of 
eS AL 

The Jew took little part in the public discus- 
sions which led to the adoption of the Constitu- 
tion. He had not at that time made his appear- 


LEADERSHIP IN RELIGIOUS FREEDOM 101 


ance in the politics of any country, certainly not 
since the time of the Inquisition in Spain. But 
he was profoundly concerned in the great out- 
come, which secured for him the fruits of the 
long battle in behalf of religious liberty; and he 
was sensitive over the denial of political rights. 
There is a story of a visit made by a rabbi upon 
the Board of Censors of Pennsylvania, after the 
Revolution. One of the members of his Syna- 
gogue had been chosen by his Christian fellow 
citizens to some public office, and he was con- 
fronted with a law which prescribed a religious 
test in the oath of public officials. The rabbi de- 
clared that the test was unjust to a member of a 
race that had given loyal support to the Conti- 
nental army; some with the militia and others 
by contributing of their funds to maintain the 
cause. He was met by the scornful declaration 
of one of the officials: “There are enough white 
men to hold the public offices.” The rabbi re- 
plied with the question: “Do you happen to have 
one here?” 

This rabbi, Gershom Mendes Seixas, was min- 
ister of Shearith Israel, first American Hebrew 
Congregation, which long before had been estab- 
lished in New York. He was the friend of 
Washington. Among the many educated He- 
brews who had come to this country in the cen- 
tury preceding the Revolution, he was conspicu- 


102 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ous. When Columbia College was chartered he 
was chosen one of its first Trustees, and his ad- 
_ vice was relied upon in its classical courses. He 
was of the mould of Moses Mendelssohn. When 
the British captured New York, loyalty to their 
cause was demanded, and the response of the 
rabbi was to close his synagogue and move with 
his followers first to New England and then to 
Philadelphia, where, at the dedication of a new 
synagogue, he invoked “the blessing of Almighty 
God on the members of these States in Congress 
assembled, and on His Excellency George Wash- 
ington, Commanding General of these Colonies.” 
When, at the end of the war, he returned to New 
York and to his first Congregation, he was one of 
the first American ministers to preach a Thanks- 
giving Day sermon, and was one of the clergy- 
men personally participating in the ceremony of 
the inauguration of General Washington as 
President of the United States. 

He instituted at his synagogue a prayer for 
the Government in English, previously read in 
Spanish—insisting that, as Americans, his Con- 
gregation could not tolerate the use of any 
tongue but the sublime one of Israel and that of 
their adopted country. Upon his tombstone is 
engraved: “The Patriot Minister of the Ameri- 
can Revolution,” and ‘One of the Incorporators 
of Columbia College.” 


GHAPTEROV ITT 
MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 


THE protest of the Philadelphia rabbi against 
the exclusion of the Jew from office on account 
of religion, over a century ago, was a prelude to 
the admission of members of the race to politics. 
The service they had rendered in the army and 
in trade and industry had won for them the popu- 
lar regard, which flowered out in the conferring 
of office. 

An early illustration was furnished by the 
State of Georgia. There were relatively few 
Jews in Georgia at the close of the Revolution. 
They formed an extremely small percentage of 
the total population. Yet the public records 
show that a considerable number of them were 
given offices of public trust. They were promi- 
nent in revising the State Constitution, became 
County Justices and had membership in both 
fiovecsuot theilecislature iin jp larcoynh pou 
when Thomas Jefferson first took oath as Presi- 
dent of the United States, Georgia inaugurated 
as Governor David Emanuel who was a Jew. 
According to the reports he was a man of un- 
usual ability. He had been a soldier, a legislator 
and a judge. The Georgia Gazeteer summed up 
his merits in the phrase, “A man of fine capacity, 
inflexible integrity.” This elevation of Emanuel 

103 


104 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


to the foremost office in the State was establish- 
ing a precedent for the rest of the world which 
it was slow to follow. It was a half century 
afterwards before England conferred any com- 
parable honor upon a Jew, London choosing 
David Salomons, a Jew, for Lord Mayor in 
1855. Twenty years before that time the first 
Jewish juror had been accepted, a Liverpool 
silversmith named Joseph Hess, who was sworn 
in on the Pentateuch in 1835. In 1837 Queen 
Victoria knighted Moses Montefiore as a reward 
for his noble beneficence, which had by no means 
been confined to his race. 

A. Jew was indeed elected to Parliament more 
than 80 years ago. He was a grandson of Anselm 
Rothschild but he could not qualify because the 
official oath was required “on the true faith of a 
Christian.”’ Macaulay referred pungently to the 
denial of representation to an English constitu- 
ency because it chose a progressive citizen who 
was a Jew. “A congregation of sovereigns may be 
forced to summon a Jew to their assistance. The 
scrawl of a Jew on the back of a piece of paper 
may be worth more than the royal word of three 
kings or the national faith of three new Ameri- 
can republics.”’ 

In America, however, the Jews had no deeply 
seated prejudice to overcome. The action of 
Georgia in making Emanuel governor at that 


MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 105 


early time showed that very little account was 
taken of race. 

The first Jew chosen to the United States 
Senate was David Yulee, born Levy. He was 
one of the first two senators chosen by Florida. 
In the period preceding the Civil War there 
were Jews from both the North and the South 
in Congress, Henry M. Phillips and Lewis Levin, 
‘of Pennsylvania, and Emanuel Hart, of New 
York, among them. 

At about the same time there appeared from 
Louisiana a very powerful character who was 
destined to play an important part not merely in 
the government at Washington but especially in 
the history of the southern Confederacy. Judah 
P. Benjamin was a close friend of Jefferson 
Davis, Robert Toombs and Alexander H. Ste- 
vens. He gained distinction at once by reason 
of his intellectual power, his independence of 
opinion and his force in expressing it. At an 
early age he became a member of the national 
Senate. When the Southern States set up their 
government, Benjamin was its first Attorney- 
General. Afterwards he became its Secretary of 
War and in the latter place he was by no means 
popular with the politicians and neither did he 
satisfy the staff officers of some of the generals, 
for he made short work of conventions and for- 
malities. It is said that Lee remarked of him 


106 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


when opposition was made to a Benjamin order: 
“The trouble with him is that his first thought is 
not to be polite but right—and what he thinks at 
the start is usually what others think last.” He 
afterwards became Secretary of State, thus hold- 
ing the three most important positions in the 
Confederate Cabinet. After the fall of Rich- 
mond and the overthrow of the Confederacy he 
went to London where he became a recognized 
leader of the bar, the professional income cred- 
ited to him passing $200,000 a year. Franklin 
Pierce had become acquainted with Benjamin 
when he was a student and the good opinion 
which he then formed was increased by what he 
saw of the capacity of Benjamin in public office, 
and he urged him to accept appointment as a 
Justice of the United States Supreme Court. 
Thus Mr. Wilson had a precedent of half a cen- 
tury when he summoned a Jew, Louis D. Bran- 
deis, to this high judicial position. 

In diplomacy three Presidents have honored 
Oscar Straus. Henry Morgenthau was subse- 
quently called to the same foreign post as that 
held by Straus. Mr. Harding assigned to the ad- 
ministration of our National Mercantile Marine, 
with problems the most complex, Albert D. Las- 
ker, American nephew of the celebrated German 
Liberal leader who was able to stand against 
Bismarck; and for the rounding out of our War 


MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 107 


Finance Board’s stupendous program, and the 
perfecting of Federal Farm Loan policies he re- 
lied upon Eugene Meyer. So, too, it was that 
Jules S. Bache and Michael Friedsam have served 
the nation in confidential diplomacy abroad and 
that Paul Warburg resigned international bank- 
ing to perfect Federal Reserve Bank organization. 

During the trying period of war, and after- 
wards President Wilson called many Jewish citi- 
zens into close co-operation. Particularly earnest 
adviser was Dr. Stephen S. Wise—who in the 
very earliest stages of the war was a volunteer so 
ardent to support his country that thinking only 
of service he hurried even to take a workman’s 
full hours among shipyard laborers. Mr. Wil- 
son’s reliance upon Mr. Baruch, his confidence 
in Mr. Lehman and Mr. Rosenwald, his sum- 
mons to the patriotism of Samuel Gompers are 
well known and make inspiring war chapters. 

The participation of the Jews in the politics of 
this country has steadily increased and at last 
discrimination against them has practically been 
banished, so that today they are probably rep- 
resented in political and judicial offices nearly in 
proportion to their numbers. 

But to return to the service of the Jew in war: 
what was called “Jimmy Madison’s war” was al- 
most wholly an outcome of international rival- 
ries in trade. American interests became a foot- 


108 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ball in the contest between Napoleon and his 


enemies. The action of cabinets, the rulings in 
council and the various decrees of retaliation 
threatened to have the result of completely de- 
stroying American commerce. The substance of 
the European nations was being consumed in 
wars. Our country was at peace and, with the 
fullness of the resources of a great new country, 
it was fast developing into a powerful nation. It 
is not to be wondered at that we should have 
keenly resented the European policies, and, if 
Germany a few years ago made war upon us 
when she attacked our ships and neutral vessels 
on the high seas, having Americans aboard, cer- 
tainly England made war upon us when her war- 
ships stopped our merchantmen, and impressed 
in many instances native-born Americans from 
their decks,.and compelled them to fight the bat- 
tles of England. 

Accordingly we went to war, and it is extra- 
ordinary that we emerged from it without hu- 
miliation, for we were almost wholly unprepared. 
The war came during a lull in the fighting 
in Europe, when the veteran armies of England 
and her ships of war had nothing else to do at 
the time except to conquer us. It is remarkable 
under the circumstances that we should have 
emerged from the war as well as we did so far 
as the fighting was concerned, for our vic- 


7 > tie 


MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 109 


tories and defeats upon land and water did not 
come far from balancing each other. We at 
least succeeded in preserving our self-confidence, 
which, even if sometimes disagreeable, is an im- 
portant quality for a young nation to possess. 

The Jews taking part in this war especially 
distinguished themselves in privateering.* A pri- 
vateer was the instrument at that time by which 
we inflicted the greatest measure of damage upon 
the enemy. Perhaps the outstanding Jew in this 
war was Uriah Levy of Philadelphia. He was a 
mere boy but he secured control of a little 
schooner, upon the deck of which he fastened a 
huge naval gun. His comrades were not willing 
to tempt the seas upon such a frail craft. Levy, 
however, attacked the first ship he saw flying the 
British flag, and in his choice of the enemy he 
showed more enthusiasm than judgment, for he 
was quickly captured and taken in the ship’s dun- 
geon to England. In London he was given a 
good deal of liberty and had an opportunity to 
gratify his sense of Americanism. One day a 
British acquaintance loudly denounced Andrew 
Jackson, who was one of Levy’s heroes, and 
Levy’s argument in reply was to knock the 
Briton down. 

Ultimately Levy found his way back to 
America again, secured another ship, selected 





*Vide Leon Hithner, Curator, American-Jewish Historical Society. 


110 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


with better judgment, and before the war was 
over he had distinguished himself. He captured 
enemy ships, made prizes, and won the recog- 
nition of the national navy.* 

With the return of peace there was a glut of 
naval officers compared with the number of 
places to be filled and Levy, without powerful 
backers, had his claims passed over, but later he 
was made a Captain and accorded the title of 
Commodore. He was then incautious enough to 
venture upon a reform. He was one of the first 
to challenge a sacred naval tradition. He denied 
that the Ship’s Master should have the power 
to string up his sailors and lash them as he 
saw fit. He declared that flogging was barba- 
rous. He suffered the lot of many other re- 
formers, was caricatured and lampooned, and 
finally was ordered by superior authority to keep 
quiet. He refused obedience and was punished. 
But when Andrew Jackson became President, 
he had learned of the fight in which Levy had 
taken part when he himself had been denounced 





*Though he did not become a popular national figure as has Commodore 
Levy, one of the most daring and successful of American patriots on the 
sea in the war of 1812 was Captain John Ordroneaux, a French-Jew, 
privateer, of New York. Edgar Stanton Maclay, as a historian of the 
American Navy, devotes an entire chapter to Ordroneaux. He cruised the 
entire British coast, and in one month took nine valuable prizes in the 
British Channel. Chased, at various stages of his voyage, by seventeen 
men of war, he managed always to escape, while the goods he cap- 
tured and brought safe to port sold for three million dollars, beside which 
he secured large sums in specie, His greatest exploit was, in a ship of 
seventeen guns, engaging the British forty-four gun frigate Endymion 
which after having forty-nine killed and thirty-seven wounded asked for 
quarter and surrendered—officers and men binding themselves not again 
to serve against the United States. 


MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 111 


in London, and he became a strong partisan of 
Levy. He took up the cause for which Levy had 
been degraded and, as a result of his intervention, 
flogging was banished from the navy. It must 
be set down to the credit of the Jew and his readi- 
ness to fight, that the agitation against flogging 
secured headway and that it finally prevailed. 
Another Jewish name stands out in the war 
of 1812, although it gained national recognition 
some time afterwards and in connection with 
another event. The building of Bunker Hill 
Monument was a very ambitious undertaking 
in the times when it was reared, and the work 
lagged greatly. Nothing of such magnitude had 
ever before been attempted in the country. In our 
day, when government is exalted into a great 
paternal institution, the thing would be handled 
in more simple fashion. The public treasury is ex- 
pected to do everything. The people now are ac- 
customed to go to Congress and get an appropria- 
tion when they desire to gratify their patriotism 
by erecting a monument, but in 1820 public opin- 
ion was not so far advanced upon such lines. 
The people believed that they should commemo- 
rate the first great battle of the Revolution by a 
popular subscription in which each one directly 
gave his part; and so they embarked upon raising 
what was then a very large sum of money. After 
twenty years of struggle the monument was still 


112 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


uncompleted and twenty thousand dollars more 
were needed. At last Amos Lawrence, a leading 
merchant of Boston, offered to give ten thousand 
dollars if another would give an equal amount. 
This princely offer was received in cold silence 
in the financial sections of the neighborhoods such 
as Boston and New York, from which a favor- 
able response might have been expected. 

But there came a remittance of ten thousand 
dollars from a remote part of the country, from 
Judah Touro, a Jew, of New Orleans, and the 
completion of the monument was assured. The 
event was commemorated by a dinner in Faneuil 
Hall. Amid the eloquent speeches that were 
made, a toast was proposed in lines which recog- 
nized the generosity of the two patriots, but 
hardly recalls the literary glories of Boston’s 
golden age: 

Amos and Judah, venerated names, 

Patriarch and Prophet press their equal claims; 

Like generous coursers running neck and neck, 

Each aids the cause by giving it a check; 


Christian and Jew, they carry out one plan— 
For though of different faith, each is in heart a man. 


Touro was born in New England. He mi- 
erated to Louisiana where as a merchant, an im- 
porter and exporter, he made a great fortune. 
When the war of 1812 moved from the sea and 
from the North to the Southern field, he was in 
the thick of General Jackson’s fighting. In the 
battle of New Orleans he was almost mortally 


MERITING WASHINGTON’S APPROBATION 113 


wounded. Though Touro was wealthy and lived 
in a slave state, he owned but a single slave, 
whom he educated and made free after giving 

him a home. He afterwards lived with a friend 
' who owned slaves, and he made provision for 
the freedom of all of them. His philanthropies 
were country-wide. 

The Touro name from the earliest colony days 
was identified with the Roger Williams Newport 
foundation. ‘Touro Street, site of the first Syna- 
gogue, preserves the name in honor of Isaac 
Touro, its first Minister. Incidentally, even in that 
primitive time there was lavish expenditure upon 
_ this house of worship, described by a contempo- 
rary Gentile writer as an “Edifice the most per- 
fect of the Temple kind perhaps in America.” 
Its cemetery, endowed by a Judah Touro legacy, 
has been made famous by Longfellow’s idealiza- 
tion. Washington, visiting Newport in 1790, 
was addressed by its congregation in a pathetic 
letter of welcome. “Deprived,” the letter de- 
clared, “tas we have heretofore been of invalu- 
able rights of free citizens, we now with a deep 
sense of gratitude to the Almighty Disposer of 
all events behold a government created by the 
majesty of the people, a government which gives 
no sanction to bigotry and no assistance to per- 
secution, but generously affords to all liberty of 
conscience and immunities of citizenship.” 

Washington’s reply is memorable. It set forth 


114 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


America’s formal answer upon a problem which 
had vexed the nations of the world for centuries. 
It stated with an authority unsurpassed among 
men the position of liberality to which we had 
then attained. 

“The citizens of the United States of 
America,” said Washington, “have the right to 
applaud themselves for having given to mankind 
examples of an enlarged and liberal policy 
worthy of imitation. All possess alike, liberty 
of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It 
is no more that toleration is spoken of as if it 
were by the indulgence of one class of people that 
another enjoyed the exercise of their inherited 
natural rights; for, happily, the Government of 
the United States, which gives to bigotry no 
sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires 
only that they who live under its protection 
should demean themselves as good citizens in 
giving it on all occasions their effectual support. 
It would be inconsistent with the frankness of my 
character not to avow that I am pleased with 
your favorable opinion of my administration and 
fervent wishes for my felicity. May the children 
of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land 
continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the 
other inhabitants, while every one shall sit in 
safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there 
shall be none to make him afraid.” 


CET ATPASE Ta 
THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 


The most definite and perhaps the most ancient 
charge against the Jew is that he lacks in capac- 
ity for patriotism towards anything except his 
own race. 

“He will serve France against the Germans, 
or the Germans against France, and he will do 
so indifferently as a resident in the country he 
benefits or the country he wounds; for he is in- 
caiterent, toveithen.'|s. Dut) its clear ithatun ‘all 
this there are examples of what im us would be 
treason. In him such actions are not treasons 
for he does not betray Israel. But they all have 
an atmosphere repellent to us. They are things 
which if we did them (or when we do them) 
degrade us. They do not degrade the Jew.” 

The foregoing appears in a book that recently 
appeared from a well known writer* and serves 
to show that the ancient charge still persists 
and in a somewhat extreme form. If true, it 
lies against the fitness of the Jew for citizenship 
in a democratic republic like our own. With us 
the paramount duty of the citizen in peace or 
war is to the State and not to the particular race 
or class to which he belongs. Standing upon an 





*“The Jews,” by Hilaire Belloc. Houghton, Mifflin Co., Publishers. 
115 


116 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


equal platform with all, his duty is towards all. 
If one man or class may be absolved from a pri- 
mary duty to the whole, so must another be. 
Upon a basis of inequality of obligation, a state 
like ours cannot stand. You cannot have a com- 
monwealth without a common duty on the part 
of all its citizens. Undoubtedly we have had 
Jews who have subordinated the interest of our 
country to the interest of their race just as we 
have had citizens sprung from other races who 
have cast their ballots here with primary refer- 
ence to the interest of countries beyond the sea, 
but the thing has been done, in either case, in vio- 
lation of the fundamental obligation of Ameri- 
can citizenship. If it be admitted that the Jews 
may put Israel above the nation and assume an 
attitude towards the latter which in an ordinary 
man would be treason, then they cannot be treated 
as citizens, but must be segregated and dealt with 
as a separate and alien class. As applied to 
America Mr. Belloc’s statement would amount to 
a very unreal assumption and as to Europe its 
correctness may be questioned. The remedy pro- 
posed by him is wholly theoretical and impractic- 
able in a modern State, or indeed even in the 
State which Mr. Belloc foresees—the “King,” 
after the corrupt parliamentary system which he 
deplores shall have been swept away. He says at 
page 96, “I may be told that to put an end to 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 117 


this state of affairs is impossible so long as par- 
liamentary government, with its profound cor- 
ruption endures....To which I answer that 
the parliamentary system will not last forever. 
It is already in active dissolution among ourselves 
and badly hit elsewhere. The King may not be 
so far off as people think him to be.” And has 
the government of the absolute Kings been free 
from corruption? Was everything pure under 
the Czars? Are the friends of untainted gov- 
ernments to look back for their models to the rule 
of prostitutes and parasites under the arbitrary 
French kings? So far as the governmental fac- 
tor is concerned we must be permitted to consider 
proposed solutions of the Jewish question as sub- 
ject to the conditions imposed by the modern 
State, and who imagines that a modern State 
would consent to an arrangement under which 
the members of a race should have the privileges 
of trade, of ownership of property, the protection 
of the laws and the other rights of citizenship, 
and be free from its obligations and especially 
that highest obligation of fealty to the State? If 
the thing were attempted, it would give rise to 
the most odious persecution. The solution may 
be dismissed as wholly chimerical. There is no 
likelihood that the law will consent to the estab- 
lishment of a privileged race on the one hand or 
a class of helots on the other. And as to the 


118 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


idyllic autocrat without a parliament, whose com- 
ing is suggested, the submergence of the rights 
of the masses which would follow the appearance 
of that potentate would render of little relative 
importance the question whether the new order 
would be able to deal effectively with the Jews. 

Race psychology has been very much over- 
done, especially in the case of the Jews. They 
will be found to act very much as other men act 
under the pressure of the same circumstances. 
The only safe test for a generalization is to con- 
sider individual instances, and if that is done, 
very many of the wise conclusions drawn against 
the Jews will be found of little value. 

The ancient charge of incapacity for patriot- 
ism, in the common sense of the term, requires 
the consideration of a great deal of material that 
is pertinent to it, and what I shall consider will 
relate chiefly to the American Jew’s capacity for 
patriotism as shown by his record. Much that will 
enable one to form an opinion upon this point I 
have already produced but there is much more 
at hand. Obviously patriotism may be shown in 
peace as well as in war, but the record of ser- 
vice of the American Jew will stand the test of 
either peace or war. 

“From the day of the founding of the Re- 
public,’ said Theodore Roosevelt, ‘we have had 
no struggle, military or civil, in which there have 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 119 


not been citizens of Jewish faith who played 
an eminent part for the honor and credit of the 
Nation.” 

General Washington in the Revolution wel- 
comed their cooperation. 

General Jackson was a warm upholder of their 
fidelity, a witness to their loyalty in arms. 

General Winfield Scott, reviewing his Mexican 
campaign, declared that “From Vera Cruz to the 
capital of Mexico there was one jealous rivalry 
in heroic daring and brilliant achievement. All 
proved themselves the faithful sons of our be- 
loved country, and no spectator could fail to dis- 
miss any lingering prejudice he may have enter- 
tained as to the comparative merits of Americans 
by birth and Americans by adoption.” 

President Cleveland in a public address said: 
“When with true American enthusiasm and pride 
we recall the story of the war for our independ- 
ence, and rejoice in the indomitable courage and 
fortitude of our Revolutionary heroes, we should 
not fail to remember how well the Jews of 
America performed their part in the struggle 
and how in every way they usefully and patrioti- 
cally supported the interests of their newly found 
home. Nor can we overlook, if we are decently 
just, the valuable aid cheerfully contributed by 
our Jewish fellow-countryman in every national 
emergency that has since overtaken us.” 


120 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


John Hay, intimate with every phase of 
American history from Lincoln to Roosevelt, 
speaking as Secretary of State, said: “Nobody 
can ever make the American think ill of the Jews 
asaclass orasarace. Weknow them too well.” 

Mark Twain had frequent merry inclinations 
toward the Jews. In an article entitled “Con- 
cerning the Jews,” he said much of the prejudice 
would vanish if the Jew took part in the military 
affairs of the country. This was quoted exten- 
sively by those who were anti-Jewish; but it was 
of a sudden disposed of by Mark Twain himself. 
In as public a way as was open to him, in the 
preface to a new volume (“The Man Who Cor- 
rupted Hadleyburg’’), he made this recantation: 

“When I published my article,” (in Harper’s 
Monthly), the author writes, “I was ignorant 
—like the rest of the Christian world—of the 
fact that the Jew had a record as a soldier. I 
have since seen the official statistics, and I find 
that he furnished soldiers and high officers in the 
Revolution, the War of 1812 and the Mexican 
War. In the Civil War he was represented in 
the armies and navies of both the North and the 
South by 10 per cent of his numerical strength— 
the same percentage that was furnished by the 
Christian population of the two sections. 

“This large fact means more than it seems to 
mean; for it means that the Jew’s patriotism was 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 121 


not merely level with the Christians but over- 
passed it. When the Christian volunteer arrived 
in camp, he got a welcome and applause, but, as 
a rule, the Jew got a snub. His company was not 
desired and he was made to feel it. That he 
nevertheless conquered his wounded pride, and 
sacrified both that and his blood for the flag, 
raises the average and quality of his patriotism 
above the Christian’s. His record for capacity, for 
fidelity and for gallant soldiership in the field is 
as good as anyone’s. This is true of the Jewish 
private soldiers and the Jewish generals alike. 


“That slur upon the Jew cannot hold up its 
head in the presence of the figures of the War 
Department. It has done its work and done it 
long and faithfully and with high approval; it 
ought now to be pensioned off and retired from 
active service.” 

During the Civil War in New York alone two 
thousand Jews entered the Union service. More 
than a thousand came from Illinois. The states 
that remained in the Union contributed six 
thousand men, which was at least as large as the 
percentage of the total Jewish population. One 
of them entering the Union Army as a private 
rose to the rank of brevet Major General. 
Another, beginning as a second lieutenant, at- 
tained the rank of Brigadier General and won 
high distinction in the battles of Chancellorsville 


122 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


and Gettysburg. Others also attained high rank. 
When it is borne in mind that these men served 
in regiments and divisions not made up of Jews 
but chiefly of other races—and that they were 
exposed to racial prejudice,—it may be inferred 
that the merit of the achievements which led to 
their promotion was beyond any manner of ques- 
tion. And so also was it at the South, for the 
Jewish citizen of Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, 
Texas, and the other States was as devoted to 
his “State’s Rights” as any of his fellow-citizens 
there could be; and the records of Jewish con- 
tribution are notable in the Confederacy annals, 
exemplified by such examples as Simon Baruch, 
Surgeon General on the staff of General Lee, 
and Mayer Lehman, whose tested business wis- 
dom made him Alabama’s Commissary General. 
Mayer Lehman it was who set Southern spindles 
going when war’s outbreak found his state’s cot- 
ton crop without market or mills to consume it. 
Both of these eminent Confederates at the close 
of the war came North to new citizenship and 
broad national service. Of Dr. Baruch, in an 
address to the New York Academy of Medicine, 
no less eminent authority than Dr. J. A. Wyeth 
said: “The profession and humanity owe more 
to Dr. Baruch than to any other man for the 
development of the surgery of appendicitis. He 
put hydropathy upon a scientific basis.” 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 123 


In other words, the Jews of the North and 
South were fighting against each other and act- 
ing much like the men of other races in their 
respective sections. 

In that tense time of Civil War, public opinion’s 
sensitiveness was appealed to insistently by anti- 
Jewish partisans—a fact that has been set forth 
in some detail by Simon Wolf, former President 
of the outstanding fraternity of the Independent 
Order of B’nai B’rith, and—but recently dead 
in his eighty-sixth year—a superb citizen in pub- 
lic and private life from Lincoln’s first inau- 
guration. Writing during the Civil War in a 
letter to the editor of the New York Evening 
Post he charged that “anti-Jewish propa- 
ganda was inspired in the public departments” at 
Washington. He naturally wrote with some sen- 
sitiveness that the members of his race should be 
singled out for attack at the same time that the 
race as a whole was rendering noble service. 

“The war now raging has developed an in- 
sanity of abuse and an intensity of malice,” de- 
clared Mr. Wolf, “that borders upon the darkest 
days of superstition and the Spanish Inquisition. 
Has the war been inaugurated or fostered by 
Jews exclusively? Is the late Democratic party 
composed entirely of Israelites? Are all the 
blockade-runners and refugees descendants of 


124 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Abraham? Are there no native Americans en- 
gaged in rebellion? No Christians running the 
blockade? 

“T know, and I can produce the proofs, that 
some of the grandest acts of heroism performed 
during this war were by Jews—that more than a 
thousand commissioned and non-commissioned 
officers and thousands of privates are serving in 
the Union Army, whose faith is in God and their 
country. 

“There was Gen. Edward S. Solomon, who on 
the field of Gettysburg, when the guns of Lee 
thundered down on the plains, prior to the great 
charge of Pickett, had stood solitary and alone 
smoking his cigar, with a bravado that inspired 
the admiration of the whole army. There was 
Gen. Leopold Blumenberg, of Baltimore, who 
had lost one of his legs at the battle of Antietam, 
marching along with an élan worthy of a younger 
man. ‘There was Capt. J. B. Greenhut, of the 
famous Highty-second Illinois, whose brilliant 
record in the army is still the inspiration round 
the campfires of the Grand Army of the Republic. 
There was Leopold Karpeles, one of the medal- 
of-honor men, who snatched a rebel flag in the 
midst of the carnage and bore it triumphantly to 
the Union side, and who in turn became the ban- 
ner bearer of his own troop and stood valiantly 
in the midst of the most terrific fire, holding the 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 125 


flag of his adopted country aloft as a symbol and 
an inspiration. — 

“Who was it on the banks of Green River, 
in the spring of 1862, when a company of the 
Thirty-second Indiana Volunteers were attacked 
and surrounded by thousands of Texans, who 
stood single-handed against those fearful odds, 
scorning to surrender, killing and wounding eight 
of his assailants, and at last yielded his life a sac- 
rifice to duty, and thus saved his scattered regi- 
ment? Lieutenant Sachs, a Jew! But was this 
act of bravery chronicled as the deed of a Jew? 
No; nor is that any more necessary than that the 
other should be done; only it marks the contrast.” 

Mr. Wolf himself was an object of attack by 
those who were pushing the anti-Jewish propa- 
ganda during and just after the Civil War. He 
was appointed by President Grant to an impor- 
tant Federal office which he had determined not 
to accept when he learned that a protest had been 
filed with the Senate committee against his con- 
firmation because he was a Jew. He thereupon 
changed his decision and entered into a contest 
against those who urged the race argument 
against him. The result was that his appoint- 
ment was unanimously confirmed. 

The Jews also played their part bravely in the 
Spanish War. There is a reference to them, full 
of color, in the account of his campaign by 


126 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Colonel Roosevelt. ‘I remember,” he wrote, 
“once General Howard mentioning to me the 
fact that two of his brigade commanders upon 
whom he had special reliance were Jews. In San- 
tiago, when I was myself in the army, one of the 
best colonels among the regular regiments, and 
who fought beside me, was a Jew. One of the 
commanders of the ships which in the block- 
ade of the Cuban coast did so well was a Jew. 
In my own regiment I promoted five men 
from the ranks for valor and good conduct 
in battle. It happened by pure accident (for 
I knew nothing of the faith of any one of 
them) that these included two Protestants, two 
Catholics and one Jew; and that was not without 
its value as an illustration of the ethnic and 
religious makeup of our nation and of the fact 
that if a man is a good American, that is all 
we ask—without thinking of his creed or his 
birthplace.” 

The World War began, or rather America’s 
participation in it, with the American Jew’s atti- 
tude clear cut. Before our flag was there, Ameri- 
can Jews were there. And when ultimately our 
national stand was taken, Jewish volunteers 
came rushing forward. There was ample in- 
spiration for the words of the Hebrew, Julius 
Kahn, chairman of the Military Affairs Com- 
mittee on the part of the House of Representa- 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 127 


tives, a leader in framing the national conscrip- 
tion law. 

“T desire to congratulate my co-religionists on 
the splendid showing they are making in the 
matter of serving our country in this war,’ he 
said. “Many of the boys who go to the front 
will be wounded. Many of them will be killed. 
But Jews at all periods of the world’s history 
have been ready to make the supreme sacrifice 
Whenever the land that gives them shelter 
demands it. And it is fitting that we, as Ameri- 
can citizens, go forth gladly in defense of Ameri- 
can rights and the maintenance of American 
honor and prestige. When I drew the first 
draft number through the bowl on July 20, 1917, 
there passed through my mind the thought that 
this land of the free which has given the people 
of my creed absolute freedom of religious 
worship, which has placed opportunities untold 
within the reach of the humblest among us, was a 
country worth fighting for, and, if need be, dying 
for. I know that I voice the sentiments of the 
overwhelming majority of the Jews in the United 
States when I say that we will do our share 
towards keeping “Old Glory’ floating proudly in 
the skies, so that it may continue to shelter under 
its fold the downtrodden and the oppressed of 
every land.” 

Has the sentiment of Congressman Kahn been 


128 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


maintained? “We will do our share,” he prom- 
ised. The record crystallizes into a. significant 
table, and it shows that the promise was gener- 
ously kept. It discloses that while by propor- 
tion of population measurement the Jew of 
America’s “share” was about three per cent., he 
contributed to the forces of the country a third 
beyond his “share,” or four per cent. Incident- 
ally, as is well known, the selective service sys- 
tem operated more effectively in the North and 
East than in the South and in portions of the 
West, and in the urban than in the rural dis- 
tricts—that is, in the larger centers of popula- 
tion, which happen also to be the centers of 
Jewish population. Morever the number of in- 
dustrial exemptions was greatest in agriculture, 
mining and the metal industries, where Jews are 
least extensively employed. It was, therefore, an 
unavoidable feature of the draft system, that the 
Jewish elements of the population were drawn 
upon more heavily, in proportion to their num- 
bers, than the average of the other elements. 
But the principal reason for the high percent- 
age of Jews in the service seems to rest else- 
where, as is pointed out by Mr. Julian Leavitt, 
Director of the Board of Jewish War Records. 
It is to be found in the large number of Jewish 
volunteers. The record according to Mr. Lea- 
vitt, indicates that there were approximately 


THE AVERAGE AND QUALITY OF PATRIOTISM 129 


40,000 Jewish volunteers in the service. In other 
words, the normal Jewish quota of three per 
cent seems to have been contributed through the 
draft, and the excess of the quota to have been 
supplied by volunteers. 

Compressed into paragraphs, this broad can- 
vass of the Jewish War Record Board shows 
some distinctive things in addition to those I have 
mentioned. 

It shows that honors conferred upon Jewish 
soldiers for valor in action included no less than 
1,100 citations. Of these there were 723 con- 
ferred by the American command, 287 by the 
French, 33 by the British, and 46 by various other 
allied commands. Of the most valued Con- 
eressional Medal of Honor three were awarded 
to Jewish soldiers. The Distinguished Service 
Cross is worn by 150 American Jews, the rare 
French Medaille Militaire by four American 
Jews, and the Croix de Guerre by 174; and also 
it is shown that nearly 10,000 Jewish commis- 
sioned officers were in the several branches of the 
service. In the Army there were more than 100 
colonels and lieutenant-colonels, more than 500 
majors, 1,500 captains, and over 6,000 lieuten- 
ants. In the Navy there were over 900 Jewish 
commissioned officers, the highest rank reached 
being that of Rear-Admiral by Joseph Strauss. 
In the Marine Corps there were over 100 Jewish 


130 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


commissioned officers, including one Brigadier- 
General, Charles H. Laucheimer. 

The total of Jewish casualties was from 13,000 
to 14,000—including about 2,800 who made the 
supreme sacrifice. 

In view of this record of the Jews in the Army 
and Navy, it is clear that they did their full share 
for their country. They well deserve a place 
among their heroic comrades in arms, That is 
conclusive proof of their patriotism. 


CHAPTER X 
Wor_Lp WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 


THERE were, as | have said, more than a 
thousand citations for valor displayed by Jews, 
among our American soldiers in the World War. 
All the principal Allied countries expressed ap- 
preciation of the service of the American Jews. 
There were doubtless many very brave men 
who earned decorations, but who never re- 
ceived them, for the reason that there were 
many things done as bravely by soldiers which 
escaped the eyes of those giving decora- 
tions, as were done by those accorded cita- 
tions. Among the men who were decorated, 
the splendid deeds of the members of one race 
may be paralleled from among the members of 
other races. I should not exalt the Jew above 
his fellow countrymen in our armies in the 
great war. All that I am claiming for him 1s 
that his record in the war justly entitles him to 
stand in the great fraternity of American sol- 
diers level with his comrades. So to stand 1s 
high honor. 

When the charge is made that the Tee is not 
patriotic and will not fight for his country, his 
heroic records may be invoked to silence the 
charge. The roll of honor upon the registry of 
the Jewish war record board gives instances like 
the following among the Jews cited for bravery. 

131 


132 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


The most effective, if not the only effective, way 
of disproving the airy assumption that the Jews 
are not brave or patriotic is to cite the records 
of individual Jews. They add warmth to statis- 
tics and make them more vital. The pages that 
contain the citations are of a piece with the 
whole record and they constitute conclusive evi- 
dence of the patriotism of the Jew. It cer- 
tainly will not be beneath the dignity of history 
to record these deeds and to recite the names of 
the Jews who performed them, even if they are 
unusual and unfamiliar. No matter how ob- 
scure the names may appear to be, the deeds 
make them resplendent. I shall recall some of 
these deeds with the names of the doers appear- 
ing upon the official registry. 

Clarence Baer, of Detroit, was the first 
American to receive the medal of the Recon- 
naisance Francaise; Joseph Berg and Abe 
Levinson, lookouts in Chateau Thierry wheat 
fields, regardless of heavy artillery fire, suc- 
ceeded in putting three machine gun crews out 
of commission, and Merrill Rosenfeld at Verdun 
met death leading a group that silenced a similar 
machine gun nest; Morris Silverberg, George 
Westenberg and Bernard Neitelbarren went into 
the open fields under constant shell fire to rescue 
wounded comrades. 

Sam Arnstein and Axel Bergman of the En- 


WORLD WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 133 


gineers continued at their bridge building in 
the thick of concentrated attack; Lieutenant 
Peter Zion, bayonetted and with a slashed arm, 
scorned to have his wounds dressed until his pla- 
toon had gained its objective; Isaac Hirsch, Gil- 
bert Max and Louis Gerstein of Roxbury, vol- 
unteer stretcher bearers, were decorated for 
bringing wounded fellows through shell fire to 
the ambulances; Julius Goldstein piloted a lost 
company back to the lines at Chateau Diable; 
Samuel Block, after others had been shot down, 
carried messages through artillery barrage; 
Jacob Kaplan, crawling out in advance of the 
first line close to an enemy machine gun nest, 
sent signals that directed the destruction of 
German guns; Nathan Lieberman rushed a ma- 
chine gun nest, taking four prisoners; John 
Blohm from his shell hole—seeing a wounded 
comrade dragging himself through the grass, 
bleeding from wounds—quitted his protected 
place to rescue his unfortunate comrade, con- 
veyed him to a partial shelter behind a tree to 
bind his wounds, thence slipped into the water 
to swim with his unconscious fellow across the 
river, and then in his arms carried his burden 
over two hundred yards of open field—and all 
this in broad daylight and in the face of con- 
- tinuous machine gun fire. 

Jacques Swaab, Roy Manzer and Louis Bern- 


134 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


heimer of the air service, attacked hostile planes, 
reconnoitered behind enemy lines, and assumed 
every high altitude and plunging risk, variously 
winning decorations for their disregard of their 
own personal safety; Sergeant Sydney G. Gum- 
perts earned the Congressional Medal of Honor 
and decoration by France for destroying a 
machine gun nest and capturing sixteen Ger- 
mans single handed; Julius Toelken surprised 
a gtin crew and then turned the fire of their own 
euns upon the foe; William Shefrin, a cook, 
after both his own feet were torn away by a 
bursting shell, directed the work of rescuing 
wounded comrades till, his life blood ebbed 
away, he fell forward dead. 

And, by way of illustration of what in typical 
detail such official pronouncements say, here is 
the entry against the name of Julius Ochs Adler, 
a winner of America’s Distinguished Service 
Cross and France’s Croix de Guerre with palm, 
and Italy’s War Cross, a civilian till war broke: 

“During the night the regiment in which 
Adler had risen to be a major,” the citation pro- 
ceeds, “suddenly came under heavy shell fire of 
the enemy and the companies were ordered to 
dig in. He showed coolness, special devotion, 
and care of his men, calmly walking up and 
down in front of his command, preventing panic, 
and indicating to individual men where best to 


WORLD WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 135 


seek shelter. During this critical time he gave 
little thought to personal danger, and his action 
undoubtedly greatly reduced the number of 
casualties. During the advance in the Argonne 
Forest, this oficer showed marked leadership 
and efficiency, and exhibited great coolness, un- 
der fire, in leading his troops against the enemy, 
although time and time again superior forces 
of the enemy confronted him; and his company, 
although greatly depleted by casualties, inspired 
by his courage and example, was first to reach 
the objective at St. Juvin, capturing approxi- 
mately fifty prisoners. He was ever ready to 
go forward, however great the odds seemed 
against him.” 

No exploit of the war was more thrilling than 
the adventure of the “Lost Battalion.” Whit- 
tlesey, a Massachusetts Yankee major, and one 
of the noblest heroes of the war, was trapped 
deep within the jungles of the Argonne Forest. 
All trace of him and his devoted band was lost to 
his Seventy-seventh division—that division (com- 
posed largely of New York City’s tenement dis- 
trict men) which General Bell at Camp Upton, 
wishing it God-speed into the war, had prophesied 
would make a name for itself in France. 

Somebody had blundered; an enemy army 
hemmed the battalion within close firing lines. 
Hideous conditions had not one relieving feature. 


136 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Food was gone; water could be obtained only by 
crawling at night to a valley brook commanded 
by the fire of the enemy; the wounded, hourly 
increasing, could have only scantiest attention. 
Only two of the medical detachment lived 
through the first two days of slaughter. Hunger, 
thirst and fever were all fighting on the enemy’s 
side. It is not over-statement that one finds in 
the Seventy-seventh Regiment’s official history 
which declares that the few survivors could look 
into one another’s eyes and have only the thought 
that, “There is nothing before us but death.” 

“Surrender or die,” was the message that Ger- 
man Headquarters, conveyed by a captured 
American prisoner, sent blindfolded across the 
lines. “You are surrounded on all sides. In the 
name of humanity yield. A white flag will tell 
us you surrender.” That was the summons. 
The defiant response of Whittlesey left no room 
for doubt. There would be no surrender. 

One representative of that battalion, one that 
General Pershing in a formal order presented, 
was a Jew stripling from a crowded tenement of 
New York. Less hopeful hero material is hardly 
imaginable; yet what that lad dared and did was 
enough to arouse the enthusiasm of all America 
when the censor let the record pass. 

“Courage in emergencies is heroism, and for 
extraordinary heroism the Distinguished Serv- 


WORLD WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 17, 


ice Cross is awarded by the United States 
Government,” wrote a stirred chronicler in the 
New York Times.* 

“A humble recipient of it is Abraham Kroto- 
shinsky, an infantry private of the Bronx. He 
volunteered for a service which seemed certain 
death, for other men had fallen wounded, or had 
been killed, or were accounted ‘missing’ in at- 
tempting the duty which the youngster from New 
York sprang to perform with no illusions about 
its perils. 

“The place was the Argonne Forest, full of 
‘Bloody Angles.’ Krotoshinsky belonged to the 
‘Lost Battalion.’ Surrounded by the enemy and 
cut off from the rest of the American Army, it 
had decided to die rather than surrender. Run- 
ner after runner was sent out. They were all 
volunteers, to quote from the first despatch, ‘to 
get through the enemy’s lines and bring relief.’ 
Every man was a target as soon as he went ‘over 
the top.’ It was the valor of cold blood that 
made him run the risk. No man had gone 
through, for there was no cheer of relieving 
troops, no signal of aid coming. When the call 
for a volunteer was made again, Krotoshinsky 
spoke first, stepped up to the ordeal, went over 
in full view of the enemy, and was off to save 
the ‘Lost Battalion.’ 





*Editorial, October 18, 1918. 


138 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


“One cannot imagine the Germans cheering the 
private from the Bronx as he faced their fre, 
now stumbling, now up again, always going for- 
ward undaunted to save the battalion, but if ever 
a fighting man deserved to be cheered by a gen- 
erous enemy it was this courier who was ‘captain 
of his soul’ and dared all for love of his comrades. 
Colonel Roosevelt extolled two of his Rough 
Riders, one of whom survived, for making a 
run through the fire of the Spaniards in Cuba, 
but what a sprinkling of bullets it was compared 
with the inferno of crater making shells and ma- 
chine gun volleys in the great war! 

“About the stock and names of the heroes to 
be you can never tell,” the chronicle continues, 
“especially when fifty nationalities leap from the 
melting pot at the American call to arms. 

“If the great war has proved anything, it is 
that men of all races and from all climes are 
brave to a fault, and that heroes may wear un- 
familiar names—the name of Abraham Kroto- 
shinsky, for instance.”’ 

Unwillingly, the Jewish boy himself told his 
own story modestly to his regiment’s historian. 
“The morning of the fifth day of our trouble,” 
he said, answering inquiries, “they called for vol- 
unteers for courier. I volunteered and was ac- 
cepted. I went because,—just because I thought 
I ought to. 


WORLD WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 139 


“T was lucky enough not to be wounded. And 
after five days of starving, 1 was stronger than 
many of my friends who were twice my size. 
You know a Jew finds strength to suffer. 

“I got my orders and started. It was five 
o'clock in the morning on October seventh. I 
had to run about thirty feet in plain view of the 
Germans before I got into the forest. They saw 
me when I got up and fired everything they had 
at me. I could feel the bullets whistle all around 
me but I didn’t get hit once. I guess it wasn’t 
‘beshert’ that I should get killed by the Germans. 
Then I had to crawl right through their lines. 
They knew I was there and they were looking 
for me everywhere. I just moved along on my 
stomach, in the direction I was told, straining my 
eyes open for them. The brush was six feet 
high and often that saved me. Once a squad of 
Germans passed right by my hiding place jab- 
bing their bayonets into the thicket and swear- 
ing. One big fellow nearly stepped on my hand. 
He looked right into my eye. I thought it was 
my finish that time but he never saw me. It was 
almost six o’clock that night when I saw the 
American lines. 

“All that day I had been crawling or running 
doubled up after five days and nights without 
food and practically nothing to drink. Then my 
real trouble began. I was coming from the 


140 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


direction of the German lines and my English is 
none too good. I was afraid our own troops 
would shoot me for a German before I could ex- 
plain who I was. I thought and thought and 
finally I decided that if I called ‘Hello!’ they 
would know I am an American soldier, as 
‘Jerry’ never has used that expression when he 
tried to talk English. I called ‘Hello!’ until the 
tears came to my eyes, I was so weak, before a 
voice called out, ‘Who are you and what do you 
want?’ Pretty soon I was on my way to Head- 
quarters, and they asked me whether I could lead 
them back to the battalion, and we started. 

“T will never forget the scene when the relief 
came. The men were like crazy with joy. 

“But not many were left. Of six hundred and 
seventy-nine who had entered the pocket only 
two hundred and fifty-two were alive and of 
those only one hundred and fifty were able to 
walk without help.” 

To the story of the hero the military historian 
adds the postcript: “Abraham Krotoshinsky is a 
small, shy emaciated youth, with large limpid 
blue eyes set far apart in a face which suffering 
and privation have pinched very close to the con- 
tour of his skull. He has been for six years in 
the United States which include the service of 
Uncle Sam. Although he wears on the lapel of 
his coat the red and blue bar of the Distinguished 


WORLD WAR VALOR AND SACRIFICE 14] 


Service Cross, he is not yet a citizen. ‘Everybody 
is good to me,’ he keeps saying. “When General 
Pershing himself gave me my Cross he told me 
I should try to be a good citizen—that that was 
as much as to be a good soldier. And now,’— 
(this his insistent interruption as others would 
have him more elaborate the story of daring and 
glory)—‘now, won’t you please tell me how I 
can, quick, get my citizen papers!’ ”’ 

Major General Alexander, declaring how great 
he esteemed the honor of being the commander 
of the Seventy-seventh division, has written: “Tt 
contained in its ranks representatives of all 
who have here sought freedom and citizenship 
under the flag. Fully represented was the Jewish 
race. My heart swells with pride that I was 
their commander. I am thrilled to think of the 
fact that the principles of Americanism and the 
principles of loyalty to our country can so ani- 
mate human nature as to carry on through their 
trials and their dangers and their decimation.” 

One who charges the Jew of America with 
lack of patriotism and courage has given little 
study to his history. 


CHAPTER XI 
SERVICE UNTRAMMELLED BY SECTARIANISM 


THE Jews did not win glory in the World War 
only upon the fighting line. What their organi- 
zations did in army and navy welfare work en- 
titled them to rank with the best of the other 
noble organizations working in the same field. 

At the beginning of the war, the general desire 
to minister to the soldiers led to the formation of 
a large number of agencies, all earnest in their 
purpose, but proceeding upon their own lines. 
It soon became apparent that co-operation was 
necessary and that much more good could be 
accomplished by working under some central au- 
thority. The Jewish Welfare Board was or- 
ganized at the outbreak of the war, with a New 
England man of affairs, Colonel Cutler, as its 
head, and it soon became a most efficient order. 
Sufficient funds were raised without difficulty. 
Its service was like that of the Young Men’s 
Christian Association, the Knights of Colum- 
bus, the Red Cross and similar organizations. 
Its work began the very week when the existence 
of a state of war was declared. Many who were 
leaders in business threw their energies behind 
the organization. Great sums of money were 
contributed. Mortimer L. Schiff was the Finance 

142 


SERVICE UNTRAMMELLED BY SECTARIANISM 143 


Chairman, and the supply of funds was so liberal 
that the most ample provision was made for all 
Jews who were in the service. 

But it soon became evident that the great in- 
struments of helpfulness should be operated in 
concert with each other, and in response to an 
appeal of President Wilson complete co-operation 
was secured, and the work thereafter showed a 
symmetry and effectiveness, which made it un- 
matched in warfare. | 

“It was evident from the first” the President de- 
clared, “and has become increasingly evident that 
the service rendered by these agencies to our army 
and our Allies, are essentially one and all of a kind, 
and must of necessity, if well rendered, be ren- 
dered in the closest co-operation. Through their 
agencies the moral and spiritual resources of the 
nation have been mobolized behind our forces and ~ 
used in the finest way, and they are contributing 
directly and effectively to the winning of the war.” 

The Jewish Welfare Board was most willing 
to adopt the suggestion of the President and 
blend its activities with those of other organiza- 
tions. Indeed, it had previously acted upon the 
principle of co-operation and put on record its 
appreciation of the help it had received from the 
other workers. “Not only have we co-ordinated 
Jewish activities,” it declared, ‘but we have co- 
operated extensively with the non-Jewish agen- 


144 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


cies, with the Young Men’s Christian Association, 
Young Women’s Christian Association, Knights 
of Columbus, American Red Cross, American 
Library Association, and the War Camp Com- 
munity Service. We have exchanged kindnesses 
liberally. We have received much and we have 
in turn striven to give in accordance with our 
capacity and substance, without foregoing a jot 
of our individual character, indeed rather con- 
serving and developing it. We have drawn 
closer and closer to one another in the bonds of 
mutual sympathy and self-respect.” 

This spirit was manifest from the war’s very 
outbreak—Jews prominent among contributors 
to the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Chris- 
tian Associations, Salvation Army and Red Cross, 
in addition to subscriptions to National bond 
issues, not only individually but through their 
synagogues and other organizations. 

The chairman of the Training Camp activities, 
Mr. Raymond D. Fosdick, wrote of the work of 
the Jews and of the other organizations: “In 
1916,” he said, “I made an inspection report upon 
conditions among our troops on the Mexican bor- 
der, and it seems incredible that within two years 
thereafter so great a change to the good could 
have taken place. In 1917 it was resolved that 
bad conditions were not again to be permitted. 
Hence the creation of the Commission of Train- 


SERVICE UNTRAMMELLED BY SECTARIANISM 145 


ing Camp Activities, the Government undertaking 
to initiate wholesome agencies; and so came about 
the Jewish Welfare, the Young Men’s Christian 
Association, The National Catholic War Council, 
camp and cantonment operations. Three great 
branches they have been in humanity work. 

“The sectarian lines have vanished, and this 
work that has been carried on has not been 
carried on as Jewish work, or Protestant work, 
or Catholic work; it has been fundamentally an 
American work, carried on for all the troops in 
the camps without regard to faith.” 

And, in addition to this, the Rev. John J. 
Burke, who in the interdenominational army wel- 
fare work was the representative of the Catholic 
War Council, in a public statement said: “In the 
work of this war, in touch with the larger wel- 
fare work and religious work, in touch with all 
the religious denominations of the country, in 
touch with the Government, there is no organiza- 
tion that has shown itself more American, more 
fair, better organized, with its own powers and 
its own strength, to help the cause of our Govern- 
ment, to help the victory of America and to put 
the accent on the word Democracy, than the Jew- 
ish Welfare Board. I speak as one who has been 
intimately connected with the welfare work and 
religious work through all the time of this war. 
We have proved to the world that we can and do 


146 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


govern ourselves, that we live together with 
mutual sympathy and understanding and justice 
and that our American flag is the safeguard of 
all three—of Protestant and Catholic and Jew.” 

“I tender to the Jewish Welfare Board my 
thanks in the name of the Allied Armies,” Mar- 
shal Foch wrote; and this was written by Gen- 
eral Pershing: “The American Expeditionary 
Forces thank the Jewish Welfare Board.” 

Jacob H. Schiff, who from the start was the ani- 
mating genius of this great goodwill adventure, 
had his life’s end cheered by testimony like this. 
At one of his last public appearances Mr. Schiff 
said: “The fact that the Welfare Board under- 
stood what to do, in camp and cantonment, for 
the Jewish soldier was no doubt a good deal re- 
sponsible for the enthusiam of our young men 
when they arrived at the battle front. They were 
proud of being Jews, they were proud of being 
able to say, ‘Provision has been made for us by 
our own people as provision has been made by 
other denominations for their own men.’ ” 





*“We are not all of the same faith, but we are co-workers and brothers 
in the same sacred cause. We find no difficulty in according mutual re- 
spect to the religious observances of each other, regardless of how they 
may differ in themselves, We are making history today, when Jew and 
Gentile meet in mutual respect to assist in a religious ceremony which is 
of great importance to worshippers of the Hebrew faith. It is not neces- 
sary that we should entertain the same view in essentials of religious 
faith in order to justify our participation in this ceremony. It is only 
necessary that we should have an earnest desire to be liberal-minded and 
to show kindly consideration for the convictions of others, regardless of 
their difference from our own, to drop any feeling of prejudice and be 
animated by but one desire: to promote the sacred interests of our be- 
loved country.”—Major General J. Franklin Bell, at the dedication of 
the Jewish Ark at Camp Upton, July 14, 1918. 


SERVICE UNTRAMMELLED BY SECTARIANISM 147 


“The United War Work campaign—Catholic, 
Protestant, Jew, in heart and hand alliance for 
the good that they could do,—was a great grati- 
fication,” officially records Mortimer Schiff. It 
was a monument, indeed, to his father’s memory. 

“Tt provided generously for soldiers and sailors 
of all faiths,” said Woodrow Wilson. “Tts facili- 
ties,” said Raymond Fosdick, “were employed 
by Gentile and Jew alike.” And James K. Kelly, 
Knights of Columbus Secretary, adds: “I have 
been intimate with Catholic War Work and 
Jewish War Work alike—and the Jews certainly 
are broad minded, they were good to everybody.” 

“The first fruits of the great struggle for world 
freedom,” Louis Marshall has denominated the 
United War Work campaign. 

Here, again, as upon the field of battle, the Jew 
showed himself patriotic and broadly American. 

Any comprehensive review of the part taken by 
the Jews in the World War is conclusive upon the 
question of their patriotism. The number who en- 
tered the service, the bravery of the soldiers and the 
superb contribution which they made in the Wel- 
fare Work of the War give ground for pride to all 
fairminded Americans. They kept in step with the 
oreat mass of their countrymen, and nobly earned 
the right to be trusted by them without prejudice. 


CHAPTER XII 
PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 


It is charged that the Jews have so great a 
number of organizations within the lines of their 
race, that their attention is diverted from those 
broad things that concern the whole country to 
the things that concern only their race. But 
there is ample reason for these organizations, as 
will readily appear from the work they have to 
do. 

In the first place, there are the natural orders 
that spring up among different races; then the 
Jews have a religious creed of their own and so, 
coinciding with the lines of race, would be the or- 
ganizations—devotional, fraternal, charitable— 
growing out of their church. 

When they first came to this country they 
established charities and sheltering guardian 
associations to do that very thing. In New 
York, for example, they were commanded to take 
care of their own-poor. And then in some 
countries in Europe the members of the race 
were subjected to cruel persecutions, and the 
energies of the Jews in this country needed 
to be directed to giving relief to their fellow 
Jews abroad, which they would otherwise not 
have received—and the record of that direction 
is not less than inspirational. 

148 


PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 149 


It will be well to consider more in detail the 
work of some of the more important of these or- 
ganizations. About the middle of the last century 
there was formed in New York a Jewish frater- 
nity, Bundes Sohne, or Sons of the Covenant, the 
equivalent of which is found in the Hebrew title 
of B’nai B’rith, and it may be treated as a broadly 
representative Jewish organization. Its work 
has been to support charities, to promote educa- 
tion and, wherever in the world Jews were op- 
pressed because they were Jews, to extend to 
them'a helping hand. It was the dream of a me- 
chanic at the outset, and its operations now ex- 
tend over the whole world. 

During the Civil War it was charged that the 
order, having a considerable membership in the 
Confederacy, made its own special purposes para- 
mount to the good of the Union, and the head of 
the National Secret Service pronounced it “a dis- 
loyal organization, supporting traitors.” The 
Order demanded an investigation. And it was 
found that there was no merit in the accusation, 
but that the fraternity was concerned in work 
which both President Lincoln and Secretary of 
War Stanton approved. The membership of the 
order multiplied. Its president visited Europe 
and extended the program of helpfulness to the 
race all over the world. Its work became most 
aggressive under Leo N. Levi, who was a 


150 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


distinguished lawyer of the South, and a 
eraduate of the University of Virginia. The 
charitable side of the work and its help to the 
unfortunate was expanded, but that was not the 
great work done by the Society under Mr. Levi. 
Through him it rendered a memorable service to 
the cause of religious liberty throughout the 
world. 

He was a young man, full of energy and ambi- 
tion, and when there came the news of the ter- 
rible slaughter at Kishineff, he subordinated all 
other considerations in his strivings against a 
system under which such an atrocity: was pos- 
sible. He prepared a petition addressed to the 
Czar himself, secured a great number, of sig- 
natures to it, and he asked President Roosevelt 
to convey this message directly to our diplomatic 
representative at St. Petersburg, for presenta- 
tion to the Czar. It was a dignified message and 
there never was a nobler appeal made in behalf 
of religious freedom. These quotations will show 
its quality: 

“The cruel outrages perpetrated at Kishineff 
during Easter of 1903 have excited horror and 
reprobation throughout the world. Until your 
Majesty gave special and personal directions, the 
local authorities failed to maintain order or sup- 
press the rioting. The victims were Jews, and 
the assault was the result of race and religious 


PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 1d] 


prejudice. The rioters violated the laws of 
Russia. 

“The westward migration of Russian Jews 
which has proceeded for over twenty years, is 
being stimulated by these fears, and already that 
movement has become so great as to overshadow 
in magnitude the expulsion of the Jews from 
Spain and to rank with the exodus of Egypt. 

“Religious persecution is more sinful and more 
fatuous than war. War is sometimes necessary, 
honorable and just; religious persecution 1s 
never defensible. 

“The sinfulness and folly which give impulse 
to unnecessary war received their greatest check 
when your Majesty’s initiative resulted in an in- 
ternational court of peace. 

“With such an example before it, the civilized 
world cherishes the hope that upon the same in1- 
tiative there shall be fixed in the early days of the 
twentieth century the enduring principles of re- 
ligious liberty; that by a gracious and convincing 
expression your Majesty will proclaim, not only 
for the government of your own subjects, but 
also for the guidance of all civilized men, that 
none shall suffer in person, property, liberty, 
honor or life because of his religious belief; that 
the humblest subject or citizen may worship ac- 
cording to the dictates of his own conscience, and 
that government, whatever its former agencies, 


152 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


must safeguard these rights and immunities by 
the exercise of all its powers. 

“Bar removed from your Majesty’s dominions, 
living under different conditions and owing alle- 
siance to another Government, your petiticners 
yet venture, in the name of civilization, to plead 
for religious liberty and tolerance; to plead that 
he who led his own people and all others to the 
shrine of peace will add new lustre to his reign 
and fame by leading a new movement that shall 
commit the whole world in opposition to religious 
persecution.” 

On July 14th, 1903, this impressive document 
was, by the order of President Roosevelt, cabled 
to the American Charge d’Affaires at St. Peters- 
burg, with a letter of introduction signed by Sec- 
retary Hay. It made no impression in the cold 
atmosphere of St. Petersburg. The Czar’s gov- 
ernment refused to consider or even receive it. 

The original petition with its thousands of 
signatures was bound in a suitable volume, and 
transmitted to Secretary Hay, who in official ac- 
knowledgment wrote: 

“It gives me pleasure to accept the charge of | 
this important and significant ‘document, and 
assign it a place in the archives of the Depart- 
ment of State. 

“Although this copy of your petition did not 
reach the high destination for which it was in- 


PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 153 


tended, its words have attained a world-wide 
publicity, and have found a lodgment in many 
thousands of minds. This petition will be always 
memorable, not only for what it contains, but 
also for the number and weight of the signatures 
attached to it, embracing some of the most emi- 
nent names of our generation, of men renowned 
for intelligence, philanthropy and public spirit. 
In future, when the students of history come to 
peruse this document, they will wonder how the 
petitioners, moved to profound indignation by in- 
tolerable wrongs perpetrated on the innocent and 
helpless, should have expressed themselves in 
language so earnest and eloquent and yet so dig- 
nified, so moderate and decorous. It is a valu- 
able addition to public literature, and it will be 
sacredly cherished among the treasures of this 
Department.” 

This appeal undoubtedly affected the public 
opinion of the world, and constitutes a landmark 
in the long history of Jewish persecution. It 
was characteristic of the leadership of Leo Levi 
who administered his order broadly and did 
nothing more narrow than to assert the right of 
the members of his race to liberty. His appeals 
were liberal enough to include at the same time 
the same rights for all men. 

The spirit of Levi still animates his order. His 
successor, Adolf Kraus, Chicago jurist, displays 


154 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


the same vigor for the same ideals. At a recent 
convention of the order Mr. Kraus presented 
with great force the attitude of his order. 
“American citizenship,” he said, “is too pre- 
cious a boon to be forced or thrust upon anyone. 
It is an honor that ought to be conferred upon 
him only who understands what it means, appre- 
ciates its worth, earnestly desires it, and has 
proven himself worthy to receive it. That which 
is easily attained is little appreciated. No alien 
should be admitted to American citizenship who 
has not during his probationary period brought 
himself to an understanding of the benefits and 
obligations of such citizenship, and by his life 
and conduct shown his appreciation of it, his de- 
sire for it, and his fitness to achieve it. For the 
welfare of America, for the welfare of Judaism, 
we as Jews should see to it that no Jew 1s ad- 
mitted to American citizenship who is not worthy 
of that honor, and that everyone who comes to 
this country and proves himself unworthy to re- 
main in it, is ferreted out and sent back to the 
country from whence he came. Let every alien 
Jew who seeks to remain in America understand 
that hatred for American institutions and affilia- 
tion with those elements which seek their de- 
struction, are inconsistent with further residence 
in America, not only in the opinion of the United 
States Government, but also in the opinion of the 


PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 155 


great body of Jews who are proud of their 
American citizenship and who will tolerate no 
assault upon it by anyone whose act might call 
into question their appreciation of it.” 

This lofty ideal of citizenship cannot be im- 
pressed too often upon all immigrants into our 
country of whatever creed, and it is a most hope- 
ful sign that this widespread Jewish organization 
should be engaged in the work of putting this 
ideal in practice. Even if no reference is made 
to the valuable work of the order in other fields, 
what it has done in behalf of religious liberty 
and to maintain a high standard of our citizen- 
ship amply justifies its existence. 

The difficulties which have been imposed upon 
the Jews by reason of the sudden increase in 1m- 
migration caused by the persecutions in south- 
eastern Europe cannot be exaggerated. Our 
Jewish population more than doubled in twenty 
years and there was a very heavy burden per 
capita imposed upon the Jews of this country 
when this sudden immigration set in. The Jew- 
ish immigrants did not come for the reason ani- 
mating the recent immigration of the other races. 
Men would come from Italy or Germany or Eng- 
land to better their conditions individually but the 
Jews came fleeing from persecution. They espe- 
cially needed help and, unless they were to be- 


156 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


come public paupers, that help would need to 
come from the members of their own race. 

Thus, as a result of the persecutions in Eastern 
Europe, great numbers of destitute Jews came 
scurrying to this country and many of them were 
likely to become public charges and undoubtedly 
would have done so had they not received im- 
mediate help from their own kind. Our Jewish 
population then was relatively small compared 
with the inundation of the race which came 
from abroad and a great burden was put upon 
them adequately to care for the incomers. 
But they responded most effectively to the de- 
mand. There has been no better work done 
in caring for incoming immigrants and in train- 
ing them for American citizenship than has 
been done by the American Jews during the last 
twenty years, and it is unquestionable that the in- 
fluence of leading Jews like Dr. Cyrus Adler, 
Adolph Lewisohn, Louis Marshall, Jacob H. 
Schiff, the Strauses, the Seligmans, the Lehmans, 
the venerated Pereira and F. de Sola Mendes, 
Julius Rosenwald, Mayer 5. Isaacs, Edward 
Lauterbach, Nathan Bijur, Julian W. Mack and 
Mayer Sulzberger, has been efficiently exerted. 

When these fugitives from Russian and 
Roumanian oppression reached our shores, they 
were pitiable objects, destitute in almost every 


PRIDE IN AMERICAN CITIZENSHIP 157 


particular, yet already large numbers of them 
have achieved success in our country. 

The Jews have also established a Jewish Pub- 
lication Society which has greatly developed 
scholarship among the members of the race. 
Among the things it has accomplished is the 
translation of the Jewish Scriptures which is pro- 
nounced by scholars, a literary masterpiece. His- 
tories, essays and almost every other form of 
literature from Jewish scholars have also been 
given to the public. The Jewish Publication 
Society takes its place with the American Bible 
Society, the Methodist Book Concern and other 
similar organizations. Closely related to the Pub- 
lication Society is the work of the American Jew- 
ish Historical Society, an institution alive with 
enthusiasm and the devotion of patriotic scholar- 
ship.* For more than two score years Dr. Cyrus 
Adler, who with Judge Mayer Sulzberger was 
foremost in its foundation, has served in its presi- 
dency—now succeeded by Dr. A. S. W. Rosen- 
bach, whose prominence and authority in the 
world of rare books, is international. 

The American Jewish Committee, at the head 
of which stands Mr. Marshall, is the supervising 
force for most of the organized work done among 
the Jews. One of the enterprises of this com- 





*AppENDIxX: ‘‘American Historical Research.’ 


158 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


mittee is the establishment of a Bureau of Jewish 
Social Research and Statistics. It is well worth 
while scanning this adventure in human helpful- 
ness. One survey made by this Bureau concerns 
the Care of Dependent Children, another Recre- 
ation Facilities, and another the Study of Philan- 
thropic Operations. Sociological interest attends 
each one of these inquiries. 

What more helpful service could be rendered 
than to solve the problem of Child Dependency? 
This Bureau has created a welfare bureau to sup- 
plement child-caring institutions. The result of 
their scientific work will have a world-wide effect 
and is likely to furnish excellent examples for 
similar organizations to follow. I think it may 
be said generally of the Jewish organizations 
that they have been such as were responsive 
to the peculiar conditions of the race, and the 
work they have done as a whole has been consist- 
ent with the highest duties of citizenship and has 
proved beneficial to the whole country. 


GHAPTER XI 
INTOLERANCE’S BAsIs OF FALSEHOOD 


THE brief review of the record of the Jew in 
America and especially in its wars leaves nothing 
whatever of the accusation that he is unpatriotic. 
The charge never had any basis in reason. There 
is no more ground for the belief that the Jew can- 
not today be true to any country of which he is 
permitted genuinely to become a part, with the 
same rights as those of the other inhabitants, 
than there is to believe that the Saxons or the 
Normans cannot be true to England, or that 
there can be no patriotism in America because 
the descendants of the different races will hold 
their first allegiance to the lands from which they 
sprang. 

It is claimed that the Jews are different from 
other sections of our population because they 
have no race home and that, if Palestine should 
be reclaimed for them, some features of the so- 
called “jewish problem” would disappear. On 
the question of reclamation there appears to be 
much difference of opinion among the Jews 
themselves; but whatever might be its advan- 
tages, it is difficult to believe that the solution of 
the world-wide Jewish problem would be one of 
them. That problem must be settled by the dif- 

159 


160 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW, 


ferent nations among which the great mass of 
the Jews will continue to live and must be settled 
by them on the lines of justice, of which America 
has furnished an example. It must be the care 
of America not to break with her noble past. 
There are among the members of other race 
stocks in our country some who are charged with 
putting the interests of their motherlands above 
that of their adopted country. But in the nature 
of things the Jew can have no hyphenated citi- 
zenship because he has no motherland except that 
in which he lives, and the Canaan which might 
be reclaimed is still in the future and would form 
too narrow a basis for a state which should com- 
prehend all the members of the Jewish race. Ii 
it were true that for many centuries and until 
recent times the Jews displayed little attachment 
to some of the countries in which they lived, why, 
it may pertinently be asked, should they have 
been consumed with love for lands in which they 
were in constant danger of being plundered, in 
which they were segregated and hunted like wild 
beasts, in which they were branded and liable to 
be beaten and torn limb from limb, or burned at 
the stake? A country which accepts support 
from a race must in honor accord it protection. 
A society which steadily frowns upon a race can 
hardly expect its love in return. That country 
will command the homage of any normal human 


INTOLERANCE’S BASIS OF FALSEHOOD 161 


being which receives him as one of its own, which 
confers benefits upon him and treats him as if he 
wereaman. And because he is a man he is likely 
to have little love for a land which accords him 
worse treatment than a beast of burden should 
receive. 

It is charged that the Jew is a revolutionist. 
Men take part in revolutions against govern- 
ments because of oppression. The Jews in that 
respect do not differ from other men unless on 
the side of conservatism. That is shown by the 
French Revolution, as it is shown by the revolu- 
tion in Russia. The Jews were not the leaders in 
the French Revolution, although they took part 
in it, as did other men, but many of them were 
its victims. 

In Russia they suffered under the same abso- 
lutism which crushed the masses of the people, 
and in addition they suffered under a peculiar 
oppression directed towards them as the mem- 
bers of a race. Why should they not have joined 
in the revolt? The collapse of Russian absolut- 
ism in the throes of the World’s War was practi- 
cally inevitable. The assertion of the rights of 
the people at large in the uprising led by Keren- 
sky was probably supported by the mass of the 
Russian people, including the Russian Jews, but 
it is a glaring error to deduce from this revolu- 
tionary identification the sympathy of the Jews 


162 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


with Bolshevism. On this point Kerensky him- 
self, foremost foe and victim of Bolshevism, and 
who is not a Jew, has spoken explicitly. Ina 
statement contributed to the Jewish Chronicle of 
London, in November, 1918, he said: 

“When in the first days of the Revolution I 
was Minister of Justice, I decreed the full eman- 
cipation of the Jews, thus granting to them the 
same rights as to all other citizens. Ninety-nine 
per cent. of the Russian Jews are against the 
Bolshevists, and during the whole of the Revolu- 
tion, the Jewish intellectuals and the Jewish 
mass, were, of all non-Russian races, the most 
faithful supporters of the Revolution with which 
they were closely linked as well as with the gen- 
eral interests of the country. And although nu- 
merous Jews are to be found among the Bolshe- 
vik leaders they are renegades most of whom 
had emigrated and lost every contact with Russia 
and were no longer representative of Russian 
Jewry. 

“During the Revolution the Jews everywhere 
worked together with the parties who had co- 
alesced to organize and support the Provisional 
Government. The Jewish bankers, firms, work- 
ers’ unions, the bank—they were all for na- 
tional defense and for cooperation with the mod- 
erate ‘bourgeois’ elements in the upbuilding of 
the new State.” 


INTOLERANCE’S BASIS OF FALSEHOOD 163 


It is significant of the position of the mass of 
the Jews, as Kerensky remarks, that Anti-Semi- 
tism was fomented with the rise of Bolshevism 
to power and he aptly characterizes this move- 
ment as a criminal act of the Bolsheviks. How 
the Jewish communities in Russia have fared 
under the Bolshevist regime is succinctly told by 
Dr. D. Pazmanik, a delegate from the Crimea 
to the Peace Conference, in the Jewish Chronicle 
of London, September 5, 1919. “I estimate,” 
said Dr. Pazmanik, ‘“‘that there are about 2,000,- 
O00 Jews in Bolshevist Russia, and as they be- 
long in the main to the so-called Bourgeois 
classes, they have been completely impoverished 
and economically annihilated. Many communi- 
ties as such, have been destroyed. Hebrew 
schools and the Hebrew press are prohibited and 
Zionism is forbidden. The Bolsheviks refused 
to allow money to be subscribed for the mainte- 
nance of the synagogues, with the result that the 
Rabbis and synagogue officials are without 
salaries.” 

Mr. Israel Cohen, who contributed exact statis- 
tical reports to the Jewish Chronicle of December 
12, 1919, in substantial confirmation of the evi- 
dence given by Kerensky and others, explains 
pithily that “the unpopularity of Bolshevism 
among the Jews is due not only to its politics but 
to its predatory economics. For the establishment 


164 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


of the communist regime was aimed essentially 
at the propertied class, the bourgeoisie; it struck 
principally at the existence of the merchants, the 
manufacturers and the members of the liberal 
professions who were most largely recruited from 
the Jewish community.” 

If the Jews bore a significant or an im- 
portant part in Bolshevism, evidence of it would 
be found in the personnel of the leaders of the 
Soviet Government. The “council of the people’s 
commissars” is made up of the heads of the 
ereat departments of the Government including 
the President, Lenin, and numbers 17 mem- 
bers. Of these 17 members only one, Trotzky, is 
a Jew. Numerous lists of subordinate officials 
containing Jewish names have been produced. 
Mr. John Spargo effectually punctures these lists 
by showing they are little better than pure fabri- 
cations.* 

It is further pointed out by Israel Zangwill 
that the question of Jewish participation in the 
brutal execution of the Czar and his family is 
definitely determined. “Even the Minister of 
Justice under Koltchak’s Government has certi- 
fied that among the number of persons proved 
by the date of the preliminary inquiry to have 
been guilty of the assassination of the late Em- 
peror Nicholas II and his family, there was not 


*“The Jew and American Ideals’—John Spargo. Harper & Brothers, 


INTOLERANCE'S BASIS OF FALSEHOOD 165 


any person of Jewish descent.” The Russian 
Jew showed himself in favor of a just govern- 
ment, but equally against disorder. 

The approved formula of American anti- 
Semitism is simple. Accuse the Jews of every- 
thing wrong in the body politic from crooked 
business to crooked base-ball and crooked Tam- 
many with its long line of Jewish leaders like 
Croker and Murphy, and let the accusations 
flower out in the two stupendous lies: “The Jews 
are the architects of Bolshevism in Russia,” and 
“The Jews brought on the World War.” The 
case against the Jews is largely based upon false 
or exaggerated premises. They are accused of 
financial or industrial monopoly where precisely 
the same charge may be levelled with equal if 
not greater proof, against men of other races. If 
the name of a Jew is uncovered in any wide- 
spread swindle, at once the name of the other. 
guilty persons, who are of other races, are ig- 
nored and he is made the scapegoat to bear the 
burdens of the crimes of all. Mr. Belloc assigns 
the Panama Canal scandal as a reason for an- 
tagonism to the Jew, but what shall be said of 
the French for some very good Gallic names in 
that swindle loomed large across the Atlantic? 
The Dreyfus case Mr. Belloc assigns as another 
basis for agitation against him. But the Drey- 
fus case was as infamous a conspiracy to destroy 


166 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


an innocent man on account of his race as was 
ever known. It was so outrageous as to cause 
the very stones to cry out for justice. 

Those who in that time at the risk of their free- 
dom and their lives championed Dreyfus ren- 
dered an inestimable service to France by eras- 
ing in part at least a foul blot upon her fair name. 
It should destroy anti-Jewish prejudice instead 
of fomenting it. As to the South African war, 
we may be permitted to question Jewish respon- 
sibility for it as well as its responsibility for the 
great World War. If there were here and there 
a Jew involved, there were also great numbers 
of other races. The Jewish responsibility in 
each case seems to be established by assertion 
rather than by proof. 

If we may judge from the one country in the 
world which has treated the Jew as a man and a 
self-governing citizen, he has shown that he is 
capable of exalted patriotism, and that he rever- 
ences his citizenship in such a country. 


CHAPTER XIV 
RISE TO EMINENCE IN WoRLD FINANCE 


THE Jews have always been conspicuous for 
administrative talent and those qualities that fit 
men for what is comprehended under the term 
business. In ancient times, indeed until times 
that may fairly be called modern, most kinds of 
business were held in disrepute. The lending of 
money was an unpopular occupation in the time 
of Rome. The wages of working men were, ac- 
cording to Cicero, the mere badges of their servi- 
tude. Retailers of goods were held in disrepute 
because, according to the same authority, if they 
were to succeed it was necessary that they should 
lie. Wholesale commerce even was to an extent 
disreputable although it was better than retail 
trade.* To raise and sell food seemed the only 
business becoming in a gentleman. 

We might fairly infer that Roman ideals would 
not sanction gaining money on a large scale un- 
less by plundering provinces or stealing the public 
lands by laws passed through the Senate for the 
benefit of its members. 

But in the Dark and Middle Ages, when the Jew 
was under the ban, he was prohibited from even 
entering upon many of those common and neces- 





*Vide, “‘Story of the Jews’”—James K. Hosmer. 


167 


168 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


sary pursuits which were held in scorn by para- 
sitic aristocracies and only the most odious call- 
ings were open to him. The most odious pursuit 
of all was almost forced upon him—the lending 
of money upon interest, which was not only in 
bad repute but was prohibited by the church as 
contrary to the precepts of Christianity. 

It was heresy for a Christian to take interest. 
The world, however, was not wholly stagnant 
even in the dark times, and to the extent to which 
there was commerce, it was a borrowing and a 
lending world. The Jew was forced to meet the 
want in society and to become the money lender. 
The risks of the business, its disrepute and the 
scarcity of coin, conspired to make even justi- 
fiable rates of interest high. But laws against 
usury were lax and were loosely enforced. In 
Aragon the lender was permitted to charge a 
rate of twenty per cent and in Castile as much 
as thirty-three and one-third; and even these 
limiting laws were not respected and money lend- 
ing justly became the most hateful of all callings, 
and Jews who engaged in it augmented the hos- 
tility to their race. 

It is urged against the Jew that his religion 
authorized a discrimination against the non- 
Jew; and a passage from Deuteronomy is often 
cited, “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon 
usury but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD’ FINANCE 169 


upon usury.” Dr, Adler, a distinguished Chief 
Rabbi of London, pointed out that the correct 
translation of the Hebrew would be “interest” 
and not “usury,” and that while a Jew might lend 
upon interest to a stranger he was prohibited 
from taking interest from another Jew; and that 
the purpose of this law was to prevent the cen- 
tralization of the ownership of land in Palestine 
in a few hands, as afterwards happened in Italy. 
In Palestine every fiftieth year was called The 
Year of Jubilee, because all burdens upon land 
were cancelled every fifty years (Lev. XXV) 
and land which was encumbered or had been lost 
to the original owner reverted to him or his heirs. 
It was the purpose of this statesmanlike policy of 
Moses to prevent a few men from owning the 
whole of Palestine. “But it was different with 
regard to foreign commerce of which the trade 
routes of three continents passed through the 
country. If an Israelite possessed capital which 
he could not utilize in his own country, he had a 
right to demand from a member of a foreign 
state some consideration for the use of the money 
or capital lent to him, and if the foreigner applied 
the capital to gainful enterprise, no Mosaic prin- 
ciples were infringed by charging him interest. 
This permission only applied to sums borrowed 
for money-making purposes. When the Gentile 
needed the loan of money not for commerce but 


170 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


for his subsistence, the Mosaic law made no dif- 
ference between the stranger and the Jew—it 
being written: “And if thy brother be waxen poor 
and his hand faileth with thee, then thou shalt re- 
lieve him. Yea though he be a stranger and a 
sojourner ; that he may live with thee. Take thou 
no usury of him or increase, but fear thy God.” 

This was in effect the position of Haym Salo- 
mon, as set forth in the personal letters of Madi- 
son, when the former was out of his own re- 
sources helping to keep alive the members of the 
Continental Congress and refusing to take inter- 
est for his loans. Dr. Adler, of London, whom I 
have quoted, holds that the Mosaic law “did not 
allow the Jew to make any distinction between 
the Jew and the Gentile in the exercise of philan- 
thropy. He was bidden to visit the sick among 
the non-Israelites, to relieve the poor and to bury 
the dead even as those of his own people.” 

The highest authorities in Christian churches 
could be ranged against the charge that the Jew- 
ish law was based on race selfishness. Dean 
Stanley gave weighty expression to the opposite 
view when he said: “They,” the Commandments, 
“represent to us both in fact and idea, the gran- 
ite foundation, the immovable mountain, on which 
the world is built up, without which all theories 
of religion are but as shifting and fleeting clouds; 
they give us the two homely fundamental laws, 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 7A 


which all subsequent religion has but confirmed 
and sanctioned—the law of our duty towards 
God and the law of our duty towards our neigh- 
bor.” 

It seems too clear to require argument that 
the Jews of the Middle Ages were not only 
driven to lending money because the business 
was prohibited to others, but they were driven 
to it by having other callings closed against them. 
A great Catholic Bishop declared: “O, Nations, 
if you recall the past faults of the Jews and their 
corruptions, let it be to deplore your own work.” 
And Martin Luther said in a pamphlet published 
in 1523: “If we prohibit the Jews from following 
trades and civil occupations, we compel them to 
become usurers.” 

Though the lending of money was forced upon 
the Jew during the Middle Ages by the neces- 
sities of society and of himself, none the less the 
occupation won his race the ill-will of the public 
generally and especially of those who borrowed. 

“Hold, Father,” said Isaac in Ivanhoe, re- 
sponding to the angry friar, “mitigate and as- 
suage your choler. I pray for your Reverence 
to remember that I force my monies upon no 
one. But when churchman and layman, prince 
and prior, knight and priest, come knocking to 
Tsaac’s door, they borrow not his shekels with 
these uncivil terms. It is then ‘Friend Isaac, will 


172 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


you pleasure us in this matter, and our day shall 
be truly kept or God sa’me.’ And ‘Kind Isaac, if 
ever you served man, show yourself a friend in 
this need!’ And when the day comes and I ask 
my own, then what hear I but “Damned Jew!’ 
and “The curse of Egypt on your tribe!’, and all 
that can stir up the rude and uncivil populace 
against poor strangers.” 

The unregulated business of lending money by 
individuals illustrates the most atrocious abuses 
whether conducted by Jew or Gentile, and the 
monopoly of abuse cannot be ascribed to any 
race. The one, no more than the other, was 
above taking interest. The Tharaud brothers, 
who break away from the prevailing French 
anti-Semitism long enough to idealize the Jew,* 
yet credit him with having “ten fingers with 
which to grasp and to argue.” And yet there 
have been found among other races certainly sig- 
nal instances of avarice. The Jewish money len- 
der usually showed himself more adventurous 
than competitors and was willing to stake his 
money not simply on the narrow values of the 
security given but upon the chance happenings 
of future events. Charles James Fox, against 
whom bets were laid at Brookes’ at the most 
tremendous odds that he would never be rich, 


*Vide London Mercury, June, 1922. : 

“That piety which has supported them through the sufferings of cen- 
turies and that passion for the spiritual so strangely blended in them with 
a keen interest in material things.” 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 173 


was able to borrow great sums of money 
from the Jews. They were willing to put 
Tacteeinoney. gon) the chance ithat his elder 
brother would die without male issue, and 
that he would inherit the title and estate of his 
father. He used gaily to call his ante-chamber 
“Jerusalem,” because it was usually thronged 
with Jewish money lenders. And when finally 
an heir was born to his brother, an atmosphere 
of gloom hung over the locality which did not, 
however, extend to the generous Fox or cloud his 
Spinto we lviyabrotner ates) som ne said,ids:a 
second Messiah, born for the destruction of the 
Jews.” It turned out, however, that Fox’s father 
recognized the claims of his son’s creditors and 
their predicted destruction was averted. 

When modern banking was established as a 
science, and all classes of society which were able 
to engage in it were permitted to do so, the preju- 
dice against money lending steadily disappeared, 
and in time it even became a fashionable occupa- 
tion. As this stage approached, the accumulated 
experience of the Jew and his command of the 
laws of finance enabled him to take and to hold 
for a long time the primacy in the business. 

The widespread dispersion of the Jews, with 
their close family and racial connections, facili- 
tated their commercial transactions in general 
and especially the movement of bullion to settle 


174. PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


trade balances. It has been calculated for ex- 
ample, that Ferdinand Carvajal brought annu- 
ally to London in the time of Cromwell £100,000 
worth of bullion, equal then to a twelfth of the 
national income, and this was urged as one of the 
reasons for admitting the Jews into England. 
By a natural drift, the bullion broking of Europe 
came almost wholly into the hands of the Jews. 
Hallam apparently credits the origin of the mod- 
ern check and bill of exchange to Jewish initia- 
tion. In a foot note in his “Europe During the 
Middle Ages” he observes: “Orders to pay money 
to a particular person were introduced by the 
Jews about 1183.” The decline of the Jewish in- 
fluence in Italy was attributed “to the transfer 
of their trade in money to other hands. In the 
early part of the thirteenth century the merchants 
of Lombardy took up the business of remitting 
money by bills of exchange.” 

A painstaking investigator, Joseph Jacobs, has 
pointed out, that beyond this very important con- 
tribution to the machinery of modern exchange, 
the Jew cannot be credited or reproached for the 
organization of war financing, the bourse or stock 
exchange or the great instruments for developing 
and monopolizing commerce. Ehrenberg in his 
“Das Zeitalter der Fugger” attributes the begin- 
ning of the modern credit system and thus of 
modern capitalism in Europe to the need of 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 175 


money payments to mercenary soldiers in the 
wars between Charles the Fifth and Francis I 
from 1520 onward. Here for the first time in 
European finance large sums were lent to govern- 
ments by individual firms, on the security of the 
taxes, the Fuggers in Augsburg, financing 
Charles V; the Strozzi being the main backers 
of Francis I. While both these leading capitalists 
enlisted the resources of many other German and 
Italian firms, there is no evidence, as Mr. Jacobs 
affirms, of any Jewish capitalists being concerned 
in the first great attempt to finance modern 
states as military organizations. There is, 
further, no original connection of the Jews with 
the exchanges in which these large credit transac- 
tions were consummated. The first systematic 
daily exchange has been traced to Bruges where 
a special building was named the “Bursa,” from 
a family of Bruges, Van der Burse, which had a 
purse on its coat of arms. Both name and cus- 
tom were transferred to Antwerp where the 
model of all European bourses was built in 1531. 
In this establishment Mr. Jacobs has been unable 
to trace any Jewish participation, or in the found- 
ing of the Royal Exchange in London by Sir 
Thomas Gresham in 1572, in imitation of the 
Antwerp Exchange at a time when there were 
practically no Jews in London. 

Very slight, if any, connection of the Jew, 


176 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


also, appears in the formation of the great trad- 
ing companies in which the shares had a face 
value endorsed to bearer and could be dealt with 
as negotiable property. The beginning of recog- 
nized joint stock trading dates from the forma- 
tion of the Dutch East India Company in 1602. 
The historian Watjen ascertained from an ex- 
amination of the books of this company that of the 
first subscription of six and a half million florins 
the Jewish contribution consisted of 4,800 florins 
or less than one-tenth of one per cent. Watjen 
further shows that no Jew was allowed to be- 
come a higher official of this company and not 
even a director. Similarly in England Jews were 
excluded from all the “regulated companies” 
headed by the English East India Company. Yet 
no restrictions or exclusions availed to repress 
the push of the Jews for participation in trade. 
In fact trade seemed to revolve around them. 

The entry obtained in the Dutch West India 
Company principally by Brazilian Jews who had 
been driven out of Brazil by persecution, was 
largely instrumental in transferring the bulk of 
sugar planting and trade from Brazil to the West 
Indies, and before the end of the seventeenth cen- 
tury the Jews were distinguished for activity and 
success in every seaport which gave them a lodg- 
ment, and they brought: prosperity to the port 
as well. 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 177 


Joseph Addison’s connection with the British 
State Department gave him a comprehensive 
view of international trade probably unexcelled 
by any observer of his time. He remarks in an 
essay in “The Spectator” that the Jews “are, in- 
deed, so disseminated throughout all the trading 
parts of the world that they are become the in- 
struments by which the most distant nations con- 
verse with one another and by which mankind 
are knit together in a general correspondence. 
They are like the pegs and nails in a great build- 
ing, which though they are but little valued in 
themselves are absolutely necessary to keep the 
whole frame together.” They were a species of 
international cement, binding nations together. 
It does not appear that the bogy of monopoly had 
risen before Addison’s eye, and the spread of 
competition soon made it impossible to stir up an 
alarm to the prejudice of the Jews. 

Previous to the beginning of the nineteenth 
century the part played by the Jew in finance had 
been chiefly that of private money lender and 
bullion broker and he attained no position of con- 
spicuous dignity at least in international finance 
until the rise of the house of Rothschilds, based 
on extraordinary service to the landgrave of 
Hesse, who made Rothschild his chosen agent 
for the investment of his great private fortune 
largely in Frankfort loans and the Danish State 


178 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


debt. ‘Nathan Rothschild, one of five sons, went 
to England about 1805, and had a successful ca- 
reer as a manufacturer and bullion broker; and 
through him the money of the Grand Duke was 
applied to the purchase of bullion for Lord Wel- 
lesley, just entering upon his Spanish campaigns. 

Upon the death of Sir Francis Baring in 1810 
Nathan Rothschild became the unquestioned 
master of the London bullion market and pay- 
ments on the continent by England in the wars 
with Napoleon from 1808 were made by him, 
reckoned to amount to £15,000,000. A story 
throwing light upon the rise of the Rothschild 
firm, has been so often told that it will bear an- 
other repetition. 

In 1815 Nathan repaired to Belgium, that 
battleground of Europe and inhabited by a war- 
like race from the time of Caesar. Napoleon had 
thrown his armies across northern France to 
strike the decisive blow. From a high point Na- 
than Rothschild witnessed the battle of Waterloo 
and saw all the varying fortunes of that dramatic 
day. After the coming of the Prussians had 
brought about the decisive defeat of the French, 
he set out for England first upon a fast horse, 
then across the stormy sea in a fisherman’s boat, 
and then again in saddle, until he reached Lon- 
don on the morning of the second day. 

Everywhere he found men apprehensive and 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 179 


fearful over the result of the impending battle 
which the invincible Napoleon was to give. For 
two days he alone knew the result and he bought 
securities from the frightened holders to the full 
limit of his ability to buy. 

When the news finally reached the public what 
he had bought went up in value quickly. It was 
estimated that he had made $10,000,000 on the 
rise. 

It has been urged that the Jew was betting 
upon a sure thing and that his conduct was not 
ethical. However that may be, he was at no dis- 
advantage with speculators since his day, who 
were not Jews, who have taken advantage of 
knowledge they had obtained as members of 
boards of directors or have even secured advance 
knowledge of the decisions of courts or govern- 
ments by methods akin to bribery, or have dis- 
seminated false reports in order to influence mar- 
kets. He was using knowledge which he had 
gained with great foresight and even at the risk 
of his life. He was at least upon as high a plane 
as the speculators’ code. Yet if he had taken 
the broader view, and relieved the anxiety of 
thousands of mothers who had sons in the battle 
and the suspense of the many millions of the 
people of England when the fortunes of their 
country were at stake, he would have shown him- 
self a better citizen; and, indeed, from the narrow 


180 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


standpoint of his own fortunes he would have 
established his house more solidly in public opin- 
ion than anything it could gain from the millions 
made in the speculation. It is only fair to add 
that the extreme charge that he withheld his in- 
formation from the British government as well 
as from the public is denied by some of the more 
recent investigators. 

After Waterloo the great Jewish house became 
the banker for kings and through the power of 
money very nearly attained control of the desti- 
nies of nations. The Rothschilds were conscious 
of their power and sometimes ruled sovereigns 
and statesmen with a rod of iron. 

The five brothers Rothschild with establish- 
ments in Paris, Vienna and Naples, as well as in 
Berlin and London, from 1818 onward were the 
chief medium through which the Governments 
of Europe issued their loans for thirty years, 
but with the introduction of the joint stock prin- 
ciple into banks and institutions like the credit 
mobilier, their predominance was considerably 
decreased, while the general influence of the Jews 
in finance was extended, for combinations of Jew- 
ish firms were prominent in the new organiza- 
tions; and such firms did not act together. Heine 
refers to Rothschild and Fould as “two rabbis of 
finance who were as much opposed to one an- 
other as Hillel and Shammai,” and in later days 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 181 


the conflict of Montagu with Rothschild was 
equally marked in London. The Sterns obtained 
the Portuguese loans in opposition to the Roths- 
childs and the Pereires were successful competi- 
tors for the concession for the South Russian 
railways. 

Although the misfortune of the Barings in 
1890 left the firm of Rothschild predominant for 
the time in the financial world, it would be mis- 
leading to regard the Jewish element in inter- 
national finance as increasing in importance dur- 
ing the whole of the nineteenth century. On the 
contrary it reached its peak, in 1848, when the 
third French Revolution reduced the importance 
of Baron James de Rothschild, and at the same 
time introduced the principle of state loans. Since 
that time, other organizations, English, French 
and German not of the Jewish race, have estab- 
lished branches in the different capitals of Europe 
as well as in North and South America. The de- 
velopment of America brought great houses into 
existence which were able to dispute the primacy 
and the Rothschilds no longer wielded the finan- 
cial sceptre. Very much was taken from the im- 
portance of private bankers when the public 
funds were subscribed for directly by the people. 
This practice which was inaugurated on a large 
scale in 1848 culminated in 1917 and 1918 when 
more than $20,000,000,000 of bonds were bought 


182 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


directly from the Government by the American 
people. The multiplication of incorporated 
banks and trust companies also cut very deeply 
into the business of the private banker. 

A favorite method of juggling with the 
Protocols is to assert that subsequent events 
prove their genuineness. For instance the 
“elders” confess that it is the purpose of the Jews 
as a race to secure control of the finances of the 
world. “Is that not,’ we are asked, “the very 
thing they are doing? They are governing the 
nations through their power over money.” The 
same wicked conspiracy could have been charged 
a century ago with greater plausibility and the 
rise of the Rothschilds would have been pointed 
to as fulfillment, as if the Rothschilds would not 
have attempted to do what they did if they had 
been Hottentots. The same charge can be levelled 
against any other race and can be justified by the 
same kind of proof. 

An eminent member of the Scotch clan piles up 
a greater amount of money than any Jew ever 
possessed, and he in turn is over-topped by men 
who deal in oil, each of whom has amassed an 
even greater fortune; or a gentleman who cer- 
tainly cannot be charged with any Jewish afhlia- 
tion rolls up in a few years in the automobile 
business a greater fortune than any one of the 
Rothschilds ever could claim; or an American 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 183 


banking firm conducts financial operations for 
nations in the great world war of a magnitude 
that eclipses all the exploits of banking since the 
beginning of time. What is to be said of these 
gentlemen? What, for instance of the great 
house of Morgan which is a power in every capi- 
tal? If these particular things had been done by 
Jews what a godsend it would be to those who are 
riding the hobby that the Jews seek to control the 
money of Christendom for the glory of their race 
and in furtherance of a conspiracy for it to rule 
the world. They are even accused of establish- 
ing the lines of the Federal Reserve Act. But if 
they have committed no greater crime than that 
their forgiveness would not seem to be beyond 
hope. One hears nothing of the race stock of a 
Rockefeller or a Morgan, but if they were Jews 
one would hear nothing else. 


Undoubtedly the Jew is clever in banking as 
in general business, but so are other men and all 
of them are willing to do all the profitable busi- 
ness they are capable of doing. It is pure assump- 
tion to say that a man is in business as a Jew any 
more than as an Englishman or as a member of 
any other race, and it is an assumption also to 
ascribe the strivings of any of them merely to the 
spur of race. Even more transparent is it to 
point to the success of individuals, in winning 


184 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


what nearly all men are striving for, as evidence 
of a racial conspiracy. 

The charge is made that in fulfillment of the 
Protocols Jewish conspirators have secured con- 
trol of the vital industries of the country. The 
question that directs attention to our common 
knowledge is an effective answer. Do they con- 
trol in lumber, coal, iron and steel, oil, grain, 
cotton and wool, the great banking institutions, 
insurance companies, the motor industry, meats, 
railroads, or in any of the great so-called trusts? 

It is charged that the Jew is securing control 
of the newspapers. One who is reasonably well 
informed has only to run over in his mind the 
names of the different journals and their owners 
to conclude that the vast majority of them are con- 
trolled by others than Jews. It is true that here 
and there some moribund newspaper with an 
honorable past has been saved from bankruptcy 
by Jews and has become a prosperous organ and 
ereat in every aspect of journalism. One who 
came to this country, a penniless immigrant from 
Austria, reestablished the World and trans- 
formed it into a newspaper of great power. Cer- 
tainly the acquisition of the World by Joseph 
Pulitzer or of the New York Times by Adolph 
Ochs constituted anything but a menace to the 
country or to civilization. 

In private finance, where the control of the 


RISE TO EMINENCE IN WORLD FINANCE 185 


Jew is reputed to be the strongest, the mem- 
bership of the New York Stock Exchange would 
be to an extent indicative. It is said Jews form 
less than one-eighth of its membership although 
more than one-fourth of the population of the 
city. Does such success as the Jew has attained 
among us show in the slightest degree a con- 
spiracy against the other races? Or does it 
show that any of the other great imperial races 
of the modern world stands in need of protection 
against the Jew by proscription and a return to 
medievalism ? 


CHAPTER XV 
In THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 


Tue controversy about the Jew centers most 
fiercely upon his relations to finance and business. 
The summary already given of the development 
of the Jews’ part in finance shows that most of 
the occupations by which he might make a living 
were for a long period closed to him, except that 
of money lender, and it is as money lender that 
the literature of the world has been chiefly con- 
cerned with him. 

Shakespeare has immortalized the financial 
Jew in Shylock and that character has been a 
favorite with so many poets that his real pater- 
nity has long been in dispute. But Shylock is only 
Shylock, who may or may not ever have had an 
existence as an individual. He certainly does 
not exist as a type or representative of the ancient 
or modern Jew. Willingness to lose his money, 
and to take life instead, because it was nominated 
in the bond, is as far as possible from the char- 
acteristics of the Jew. The steady success of 
the Jew in business is of itself sufficient to dispel 
the idea that business dishonor or the spirit of 
revenge are his animating characteristics. As to 
the basis for Jewish success in business, a no- 
table man of their own has recently written upon 

186 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 187 


the subject with such point and brevity that 
what he says is well worth quoting: 
“According to the Scriptures,” writes Mr. 
Adolph Lewisohn, “in the early stages most Jews 
were engaged as farmers in tilling the and and 
at that time distinguished themselves in this 
vocation. Later on, when the opportunity to 
work on the land was denied to the Jews in most 
of the countries, they turned their energies to 
commerce and industry, and they have been most 
successful in that direction. The main reason 
for the success of the Jews as bankers and in 
trade has been their integrity and dependability, 
which earned for them the confidence of the com- 
munity. During the Napoleonic wars, when the 
German Grand Duke of Hesse left for the front 
and wanted to safeguard his possessions during 
his absence he did not deposit his property with 
any large bank or bankers publicly known in the 
large centres, but instead chose a small banker 
of his country with whom he deposited his wealth 
without any security. On the Grand Duke’s re- 
turn from the war this small country banker, 
whose name was Rothschild, handed him back his 
possessions with interest added. That was the 
foundation of the great wealth and standing of 
the Rothschild family, based on honesty and 
trustworthiness. I am confident that the main 
reason for the great success of the Jews all over 


188 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


the world as bankers and in industry and trade 
is the confidence which the Jew justly inspires.” 

The idea presented by Mr. Lewisohn is that 
the Jew succeeds in business and trade because 
he can be relied upon, and he illustrates his idea 
by the founding of the house of Rothschild, 
which was based upon his rigid observance of 
the trust which had been reposed in him in peril- 
ous times. Having received the fortune of an- 
other, he preserved it, not hidden in a napkin 
but in service, and he faithfully returned the for- 
tune itself and what he had made it yield. 

This summary derives force from the name of 
the writer, Adolph Lewisohn, who represents 
fine achievements in business, in the way he 
has performed the duties of citizenship and in 
philanthropy. His great fortune has not been made 
ereater by means of crooked flotations palmed off 
upon many small investors, but he has brought 
prosperity to those who have been associated 
with him. He has given princely sums to educa- 
tion and to public service and he has confined 
his giving by no means to the institutions of his 
race, but has generously aided the work of those 
which have aimed to serve society at large. No 
man of America has rendered more important 
aid than he to improve the condition of unfor- 
tunates in prison and secure employment for them 
after regaining their freedom, indeed to do away 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 189 


with prisons altogether. Chief Justice Taft once 
Said Orw nim) Phe chtintry, 1syithe better! itor 
Adolph Lewisohn’s coming.” 

Wall Street is the term that is generally used 
in speaking of high finance, and cynical critics 
choose often to associate it with crooked finance. 
From the establishment of Wall Street as an in- 
stitution the Jew has played a part there, though 
varying from time to time in importance. But 
at no time has he played a greater part according 
to his proportion of the population than have 
other sections of the people. He took part with 
others in the formation of the Exchange. A Jew 
was its Secretary in the early days and members 
of that race have often served upon the highest 
governing committees of the Exchange. 

In the history of Wall Street there have been 
repudiations of contracts on a large scale, and 
by men who were conspicuous in their time, 
but Jews have cut little or no figure in these 
repudiations. Nor in the great historic financial 
scandals which we have had in the country, 
has the Jew been at all conspicuous. 

When Andrew Jackson joined battle with 
Nicholas Biddle and destroyed the United 
States Bank there were many charges of fraud 
and financial corruption. A quarter of a cen- 
tury later there were great contract iniquities 
brought to light in the civil war, and in the Credit 


190 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Mobilier and other scandals the names of finan- 
ciers and statesmen were brought to shame. 
Sensational frauds were committed under our 
tariff laws. But in all this the Jew was not 
conspicuous, even if he was seen at all) And 
then from time to time there have been public 
investigations, which have revealed much evil in 
the conduct of corporate and other organiza- 
tions, including great trusts. 

There is, indeed, one Jew name notably con- 
nected with these depravities, but it is that of 
one who has brought them to light. Samuel 
Untermyer, has become nationally known for 
the wholesome crusading part he has played in 
these investigations, even as Charles Evans 
Hughes won his earliest distinction in the in- 
surance investigation. But neither in the Ship- 
building Trust that Untermyer exposed, nor in 
the insurance situation that Hughes purged was 
there Jewish responsibility disclosed. 

Wall Street has had more than one black day 
in its history and the day that stands out con- 
spicuously among them is known as “Black 
Friday.” The date was September 23rd, 1869, 
and Friday, the 23rd, might seem ominous to 
those inclined to superstition. The business of 
the country was upon an inflated paper basis, 
but the Government paid its interest in gold, 
and merchants were compelled to buy gold in 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 191 


order to pay their duties at the custom house. 
That metal therefore became a prime article 
of speculation. Like wheat and cotton and other 
things dealt in speculatively, much of the sub- 
stance of gold departed and it became largely 
atmospheric. 

An attempt was made to “corner” gold. 
There was a determined effort engineered by 
men of great ability and financial strength to 
push up the price, and plots seemed shamelessly 
to proceed even to the very doors of the White 
House, but they were foiled at last by the honest 
soldier there. James Fisk and Jay Gould were 
the promoters of the attempted corner. The 
time selected was when the farmers were selling 
their crops, and the argument that had been 
impressed upon the officers of the government, 
in order that it might remain indifferent to the 
price of gold, was that wheat and other produce 
of the farmer would bring a higher price in cur- 
rency if the price of gold was high. 

Upon the morning of that black day gold 
was selling at about 130. Orders to buy enor- 
mous quantities were thrown upon the market 
designed to exhaust all selling orders and to 
leave no limit to the price that would be reached. 
The quotation was quickly flung up 30 points 
and 30 more were threatened. The meaning of 
this was that one dollar in gold would cost those 


192 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


who must have it a dollar and a half and per- 
haps two dollars or three dollars in the current 
money of the people, dependent upon the heights 
to which the metal could be made to soar. In- 
dustry and commerce were alarmed. ‘The sol- 
vency of great merchants and banks was in 
danger. The market had never before wit- 
nessed stich an audacious drive. 

Wall Street’s Gold Room and all the streets 
about it were in swirls of delirium. Up and up 
the quotations were remorselessly lifted. There 
seemed nothing that might be able to thwart 
the designs of the conspirators. But there was 
one man who stood resolutely in the way. James 
Brown, stalwart in the quality which has kept 
for generations in the name of Brown Brothers 
the hallmark of honor, was the market leader of 
those who would be the victims of the success 
of the wild speculation. Albert Speyers, broker 
for the Gould-Fisk combination, bid 150 for 
$1,000,000 gold. James Brown sold it to him. 
For another million Speyers bid 155 and for two 
millions he bid 160, Brown supplying both 
amounts. This did not check the market. “One 
hundred and sixty for $5,000,000!” cried Speyers 
and Brown at once sold it to him. It was a trans- 
action which astounded the speculators, both by 
the audacity of the bid and the courage with 
which it was met. The Gold Room could only 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 193 


be described as the scene of a riot. Excited wit- 
nesses, after the Wall Street fashion, shouted 
out that the Government was coming to the res- 
cue, that the treasury was baffling the designs 
of the corner conspirators by throwing on the 
market its accumulated pile of gold, and that 
Brown Brothers already had the selling orders. 
Brown said nothing, not even to Fisk who bawled 
into the frenzied crowd, “Don’t you worry about 
Washington. Washington is fixed! The old 
man Corbin,’ (Colonel Corbin was brother-in- 
law to President Grant) “the old man Corbin is 
my partner.” 

After Brown had filled Speyers’ bid for the 
five millions which the corner manipulators ex- 
pected would be the beginning of a panic stam- 
pede of sellers and a consequent flight of the 
price to disastrous heights, Brown, with a great 
hoard of gold to offer, took the aggressive and 
threw amounts on the market at steadily lower 
prices and the plot soon became a thing of his- 
tory. The bull panic changed to a bear panic, 
with the price crashing with each sale until gold 
was offered even below the price at which it had 
opened in the morning. To understand the con- 
sternation of the conspirators one has but to 
estimate their loss on the single five million dol- 
lar lot which they had bought at 160, with its 
$1,500,000 shrinkage on this single transaction. 


194. PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Panic prevailed and no man there knew, if in- 
deed he cared to know, what the actual price 
might be, and least of all he who was first to lift 
the figure to its top, for Albert Speyers had col- 
lapsed, fallen in exhaustion, trying to maintain 
his loud-lunged shout, “For five millions, or any 
part, a hundred and sixty !”’ 

Edmund Clarence Stedman—known as the 
Banker-Poet later—was a Wall Street news- 
paper man at that time; and in his column in the 
Tribune appeared the following: 


High over all, and even higher, 

Was heard the voice of Israel Freyer— 
A doleful knell in the storm swept mart— 
“Five millions more! and for any part 
I’ll give one hundred and sixty!’ 


Israel Freyer—the Government Jew— 

Good as the best—soaked through and through 
With credit gained in the year he sold 

Our treasury’s precious hoard of gold, 

Now through his thankless mouth rings out 
The leaguer’s last and cruelest shout— 

“Five millions more!—for any part! 

(If it breaks your firm, if it cracks your heart) 
I'll give one hundred and sixty!” 


but listen! hold! 
In screwing upward the price of gold 
To that dangerous, last, particular peg, 
They had killed their goose with the golden egg! 


Just then the metal came pouring out 
All ways at once like a water-spout, 
Of a rushing, gushing, yellow flood, 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 195 


That drenched the bulls wherever they stood! 
It came by runners, it came by wire, 
To answer the bid of Israel Freyer, 

It poured in millions from every side, 

And almost strangled him as he cried— 
“Tl give one hundred and sixty!” 


Down, down, down, the premium fell, 
Faster than this rude rhyme can tell! 
Thirty per cent the index slid 

Yet Freyer still kept making his bid 
“One hundred and sixty for any part.” 


The sudden ruin had crazed his heart, 
Shattered his senses, cracked his brain, 
And left him crying again and again— 
Still making his bid at the market’s top, 
(Like the Dutchman’s leg that never would stop) 
“One hundred and sixty—five millions more!” 
Till they dragged him howling from the floor. 


Mr. Stedman speaks of Speyers as “the Gov- 
ernment Jew.” It has been affirmed and on good 
authority it has been denied, that Speyers was a 
Jew, but let the contention of those, who claim 
that he was a Jew, be admitted. 

As has appeared in the earlier parts of this 
work, in every great crisis of the United States 
the Jew was in the front of the Nation’s and 
humanity’s righteous ranks, and concede for 
the argument that here on Black Friday, as 
black an adventure as buccaneering ever under- 
took, was a Jew. Albert Speyers was one of 
the old men of the Gold Room; his discretion was 
axiomatic; though many interests might at differ- 


196 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ent times employ his services, his loyalty to no indi- 
vidual was questionable; over and over, difficult 
tasks had been committed to him by Daniel Drew 
and Jay Gould and Commodore Vanderbilt, and 
all, however complicated their transactions may 
have been, had uniformly found him dependable. 
Often the U. S. Treasury itself had employed 
him, until he had come to be known as the “Gov- 
ernment Jew” as he is called in the verses of 
Stedman. In their carefully engineered cam- 
paign, the Fisk combination had taken care to 
employ a broker of the highest repute. One need 
not be concerned to defend Albert Speyers; al- 
though it may be said with entire safety that he 
was at no disadvantage with the Christians, or 
rather with the Gentiles with whom he was asso- 
ciated on that fateful day. It may be insisted that 
among the many bad men who have from time to 
time appeared in finance, here was one bad Jew. 
But that would not be just to Albert Speyers. 
His whole life had been devoted to the duty 
of buying and selling upon a commission for other 
traders as he was ordered. He was not a prin- 
cipal but a broker, buying for clients upon orders, 
and those clients were in this instance masters 
in Wall Street; and just as firmly as the fif- 
teenth century Jew walked to the stake, he stood 
by the obligations of his employment and insisted 
on his employers keeping the contracts they had 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 197 


ordered him to make. And when the orders kept 
~ pouring in to buy, he went straight forward call- 
ing out “one hundred and sixty for five million 
or any part’ until the “corner” was hopelessly 
broken. 

Speyers entered the contest that morning a 
fairly rich man, for he had been successful as a 
commission broker, but he emerged from it a 
poor man, for Fisk loftily repudiated his account, 
and the broker became personally liable for all 
his transactions. And he did not attempt to 
evade them. Instead of that he stood by each 
purchase that he had made, and went with James 
Brown into the presence of Fisk and verified 
them all. Fisk appealed to the broker’s interest. 

“Speyers,” he said, as reported by Mr. Sted- 
man, “you can ask anything of us, money, capital 
or service. What do you care about these 
brokers? You have a family of children, the 
brokers are rascals.” But Speyers’ reply was 
“T took your orders and I executed them. You 
have got to keep your contracts.” It is said that 
they offered him two hundred thousand dollars, 
but he spurned it. A congressional investigation 
was ordered with Garfield at its head. Speyers 
could not be kept away by persuasion or threat 
or inducement of any sort, and the truth was 
brought to light. He refused to take part in any 
settlement and he died a poor man. 


198 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


There had been in this country achievements 
of high finance on a large scale, of which Wall 
Street was not the theater. When Martin Van 
Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson to the Presi- 
dency in 1837 the country had a genuine panic. 

Jackson had smashed the United States Bank 
and there had been hot-housed into existence 
some six hundred banks, each of them printing 
currency notes, lending at high rates, stimu- 
lating, by the glut of currency and credits, 
business of all sorts and especially of the specu- 
lative kind. These banks had nearly three hun- 
dred millions of capital, about two hundred and 
fifty millions of currency notes against it, and 
outstanding loans of more than five hundred 
millions. This was a somewhat ambitious finan- 
cial program. In the last months of Jackson’s 
administration it was announced that there would 
be money distributed from the national Treasury 
among the States. Nearly forty millions coming 
from the sale of public lands had been set aside 
for this purpose and one-fourth of it would be 
distributed forthwith. This generous distribu- 
tion augmented even the popularity of Jackson. 
It was to be paid to the States in coin. But there 
was a firm of Jewish bankers in Wall Street, 
J. L. and S. Josephs, who were representatives 
of the Rothschilds. They ventured to protest 
against the distribution. The cost had not been 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 199 


counted. Where were the ten millions of specie 
to come from? There was danger in the policy. 
But they were swept aside. The sneer that they 
were Jews seemed sufficient to put the stamp of 
disapproval upon their counsels of conservatism. 
They should be segregated in a ghetto and not 
consorting with Christians. 

The distribution went on. One bank failed 
and then another. And finally the entire bank- 
ing system of the country went to pieces. For- 
tunes were destroyed. State governments were 
crippled. Among those who failed was the Jewish 
firm of Josephs. They had protested against the 
policy, but they were a part of the financial sys- 
tem of the country and the innocent and guilty 
suffered alike. They would not repudiate the 
commitments coming to them from clients and 
correspondents, whose transactions were based 
upon a financial system which suddenly had col- 
lapsed. In their report to the European House 
of Rothschild they did not indulge in complaints ; 
they showed their optimism. “America is hurt,” 
they said, “but only for a while. We must suffer, 
but we hope. Prudence has been absent in the 
public places. There have been no Jews per- 
mitted in Government oversight of banking.” 

The most conspicuous Jewish banker in 
America began his career at about that period. 
August Belmont was born in Germany. He was 


200 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


made the American representative of the Roths- 
childs. In the New York of that time there do 
not appear to have been any Jews of great wealth, 
and in a published list of the richest hundred citi- 
zens there were few millionaires—Lenox, Astor, 
Stuyvesant, Morris, Phelps, Harper Brothers, 
the two Lorillards, and Stephen Whitney with 
ten milllions, which was the greatest fortune of 
all. Belmont was credited with having a hun- 
dred thousand dollars and he was the only Jew 
upon the list. He was personally popular. His 
house become a social center. He had a notable 
fine arts collection. His wife was of the family of 
Commodore Perry. He entertained widely and 
he was successful, not merely in his business, but 
in politics in which he took a hand. He became 
the head of the democratic organization, and in 
fact controlled it. He opposed the reconstruction 
policy of the Government, and was a staunch 
friend of Thomas F. Bayard of Delaware, who 
was later made by President Cleveland our first. 
foreign Ambassador. He threw his influence for 
Bayard’s nomination in 1872 at Cincinnati and 
might have succeeded, but for the infatuation 
which led the democrats into making a bid for 
support in the republican party rather than in 
their own, by the nomination of Horace Greeley. 

Belmont survived the panic of 1857, when ~ 
every bank in New York but one suspended pay- 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 201 


ment and when there was general distress 
throughout the country. At that time the Roths- 
childs were the great banking firm of the world 
without a near rival, and connection with them 
meant much to Belmont. 

He was an upholder of the Union, although 
his personal friend, Judah P. Benjamin, besought 
him at least to take no part. He was frequently 
consulted by the Secretary of the Treasury, and 
Jay Cooke, who was foremost as a Government 
financier in those days, steadily conferred with 
him and wrote in warm appreciation of the readi- 
ness of the Rothschilds to assist in the funding 
plans of the Government. 

“The great American fortunes of this time,” 
wrote Jay Cooke, “had not been made, and the 
wealth of this European banking house made 
an impression upon the minds of the people of 
which today we can scarcely conceive.”’ Other 
Jews than the Rothschilds took part in sup- 
porting the Government in its financial opera- 
tions. Mr. Cooke organized two syndicates, one 
American and one European, to carry through a 
two hundred million dollar operation. He wrote 
that the American subscriptions were concluded 
“in a few days” and the European part was “60 
per cent oversubscribed the first day.”’ The 
names attached to the foreign subscription made 
up a roll of Jews,—Raphael, Cohen, Seligman, 


202 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Speyer, Oppenheimer and others were upon the 
list. 

The Seligmans were Jewish bankers who 
rendered great assistance to the government dur- 
ing the Civil War. Matthew Hale Smith is 
authority for the statement that Joseph Seligman 
visited Europe at the outbreak of the war and 
did more probably than any other man to inspire 
confidence in our government; and that the Ger- 
mans especially made large investments early in 
the war through the influence of the Seligmans. 

Having occasion to talk with a veteran ob- 
server in Wall Street, who can fairly survey the 
activities of the Jews engaged in finance, he gave 
me informally his conclusions, which are well 
worth quoting. They rounded into a summary as 
follows: 

“Around the year 1900 there was marked in- 
crease of the Jew proportion in Stock Exchange 
affairs. The widespread incorporation of private 
business and the public distribution of the result- 
ing securities was an influential factor. Copper 
and Smelting Trusts, one with $175,000,000 capi- 
tal and the other over $200,000,000 had been 
floated in 1899, and the Tobacco and Shipping 
Trusts, right afterwards, added $670,000,000, 
while during 1901 United States Steel loomed 
large with over a billion and a quarter. Thus 
more than $2,500,000,000 new securities were 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 203 


put upon the market by five companies within 
a couple of years. 

“Those were the big ones, only the big ones— 
all told, the hundred million kind and the five and 
ten million kinds, made Stock Exchange figures 
over twenty billions—do you, can you com- 
prehend it—$20,000,000,000? The man of vision 
was commandeered. Famous new fortunes were 
being every day bulletined. It required courage 
to withstand such a summons. ‘The country 
went Wall Street mad. Mr. Morgan and Mr. 
Gates and Mr. Keene and Mr. Rockefeller— 
every big financier, every important interest, 
seemed all banded fraternally on one side. The 
market soared. Everybody could make money. 
Each morning the newspapers were able to fore- 
cast winning favorites for the day. And, of 
course, the natural popular feeling was that the 
closer to the game the surer, the quicker and the 
larger the profit. Moreover, many men of affairs 
had at the time large sums of new capital avail- 
able by reason of the fact that their own business 
had been absorbed into new gigantic corpora- 
tions whose securities were featuring this great 
market. 

“Stock Exchange seats were in unprecedented 
request; commission earnings reached magni- 
tudes of which old time brokers had never pre- 
sumed to dream. Jews able to make the invest- 


204 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ment joined the Board; and this fresh element 
among the brokers brought contingents of fol- 
lowers from quarters that till that time had 
known nothing, cared nothing, for Wall Street 
or any of its works. 

“And among the larger interests it was soon 
found that in virtually every group there was 
some especial and distinctive affiliation or clien- 
telle. It is easy to discern, for instance, why 
this was so in the smelting and copper trusts, for 
multi-millionaire Jewish operators were at the 
very forefront there; and only in degree, as a 
rule, was it different elsewhere insofar as con- 
cerned the chief industrials. When John Gates 
and his horde of westerners arrived it was one 
of Wall Street’s witticisms to quote Mr. Gates’ 
own slogan about them—‘Christian gentlemen 
every one.’ Yet in the Gates battalions one of 
the most important figures of all was a Jew, their 
lawyer, Max Pam. But he had little to do with 
the wild market performances that proceeded. 
While conferees breezed away boisterously at 
tickers and card tables and race tracks, he found 
time to draw a deed of trust by which he devoted 
a large part of his earnings to founding scholar- 
ships for the help of ambitious poor boys; and, 
moreover, those scholarships he placed under the 
control of one not of his own race or religion— 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 205 


Cardinal Gibbons.* ‘Just a little bit of human 
ambition, that’s all,’ was Max Pam’s only expla- 
nation.” 

This incident forms one of many -evidences 
that enmity between the Catholic and the Jew 
has vanished, and that the beneficence of the 
Jew is not limited to his own race. But my 
friend proceeded: 

“To one at all intimately familiar with what 
goes on in the higher levels of Wall Street, in- 
stances of good will transmuted into cash cur- 
rent are not rare enough to be noteworthy, and 
in doing generous things there is nothing un- 
usual for Christian and Jew to pool issues; I 
happen to know the senior member of one Stock 
Exchange firm who being almost professionally 
on the outlook for some poor fellow to help has 
a regular list of down-town associates to whom 
he telephones continually for contributions, and 
over half the names of his roll call are Jewish. 

“Giving money, though does not seem to me 
to be half the test that giving time is. I know 
men of large affairs, Jews of the millionaire class, 
who do this time-giving as a regular habit. 
Thirty years ago I first had familiarity with the 
custom. There were often days when you could 
not make a business appointment with Mayer or 
Emanuel Lehman, Jesse Seligman, Edward Lau- 





*AppenpDIxX: “The Benefaction a Cardinal Welcomed.” 


206 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


terbach, or Jacob Schiff. They had stated meet- 
ings at Mount Sinai Hospital or at some other 
philanthropic function with which nothing could 
interfere; and I recall that in the very midst of 
speculation as mad as Wall Street ever sees, 
when McLeod, the Philadelphia wizard, was con- 
trolling the Reading Railroad, and on the verge 
of annexing the New York and New England, 
the finance committee, prepared to execute con- 
tracts, was obliged to adjourn because Mr. Mc- 
Leod’s mentor, Isaac L. Rice, ‘had to’ preside at 
an orphan asylum meeting. 

“Take the case of Otto Kahn. Certainly he 
has enough to keep a mind engaged in the prob- 
lems of big business as they play in and out of 
Kuhn-Loeb’s international hive, millions and tens 
of millions the ordinary routine there. But 1s 
Kahn absorbed? Rather, the effect is that over 
work on those intricacies only drives him for re- 
lief to more work, differing work. From a financ- 
ing Board of Directors he turns to a con- 
ference on art, from a railway reorganization 
committee he breaks away to arrange an opera 
program, and in the middle of a session with ac- 
countants skeletonizing an appealing corpora- 
tion’s assets and liabilities he can turn to dictate 
to a stenographer the text of a public address 
that has to do with some public service idea at- 
tracting him. He himself calls it recreation. 


IN THE STRESS OF WALL STREET CONFLICT 20/7 


“Another phase of the Jew in finance has to 
do with the relation of broker and client. In the 
list of great traders you will find that many have 
chosen Jews for their confidential work. James 
R. Keene’s personal telephone ran into Edward 
Wasserman’s office; Edwin Hawley’s share in 
the coup with John W. Gates in Baltimore and 
Ohio was committed to B. M. Baruch, following 
Thomas F. Ryan’s quarter of a million commis- 
sion to Baruch in Tobacco Trust negotiations, 
the first big money Baruch made. E. H. Harri- 
man placed his entire Union Pacific acquisition 
plan and ambition in the hands of Jacob Schiff 
and then sat tight; and J. Pierpont Morgan, 
arch-Episcopalian, if interested in the immediate 
course of the market, kept Arthur Housman 
close within call. Reason? Do your own guess- 
ing—I only state the facts.” 

As may be inferred from this enlivening talk, 
money knows not creed nor race. “Big money” 
will associate and consort with other “big money’’ 
whether it is possessed by Christian or Jew. 
It sweeps both along upon its mighty current. If 
one wishes to know what language it uses he will 
find it does not speak Hebrew or any of the com- 
mon tongues. Its vernacular is just, “Money 
talks,” and it is understood by traders in the 
marts of London and New York and by the 
Hindoo peasants on the slopes of the Himalayas. 


208 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


There is another speech antagonistic to this 
one, quieter but not less universally understood. 

Which voice is to be the more potent? This 
is the great problem before civilization. 


CHAPTER XVI 
UNIQUE IN THE WorRLD’s PHILANTHROPY 


“THEY shall have permission to sail to and 
trade in New Netherland and to live and remain 
there, provided the poor among them shall not 
become a burden.” Thus ran the official order 
that Peter Stuyvesant, against all his protests, 
was obliged to obey, the order which gave entry 
to Jewish pioneers into what is now New York. 

“The poor among them shall not become a 
burden.” That is the basic condition. And how 
has that rule—and the pledge then given—been 
kept? The answering record sheds a proud light 
upon Jewish philanthropy. 

It is interesting to read the official ruling of 
the West India Company in its fullness—not a 
carelessly executed grant, but the outcome of 
“many consultations”; not a philanthropic declar- 
ation but just a square deal on a business basis. 
This was the text of it—addressed to Stuyvesant: 


“26th of April, 1655. 


“We would have liked to agree to your wishes and 
request that the new territories should not be further 
invaded by people of the Jewish race, for we foresee 
from such immigration the same difficulties which 
you fear, but after having further weighed and con- 
sidered the matter, we observe that it would be un- 
reasonable and unfair, especially because of the con- 
siderable loss sustained by the Jews in the taking of 


209 


210 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Brazil, and also because of the large amount of capi- 
tal which they have invested in shares of this com- 
pany. After many consultations we have decided 
and resolved upon a certain petition made by said 
Portuguese Jews, that they shall have permission to 
sail to and trade in New Netherland and to live and 
remain there, provided the poor among them shall 
not become a burden to the company or to the com- 
munity, but be supported by their own nation. You 
will govern yourself accordingly.” 


It can be said on good authority that over 
two thousand Jewish charitable organizations 
are actively, continuously at work—many of 
them with widespread branches, lodges and 
agencies; and this computation does not include 
purely local friendly functioning associations 
found in nearly every community. So vast is 
this largesse, that there have long been diff- 
culties and embarrassments in its proper dispo- 
sition. The bounty is so generous and the givers 
so numerous that, obviously, there must be over- 
lapping, duplication and confusion in the proc- 
esses of distribution. 

To attain the utmost of good, systemization 
was necessary. Union, not so much in giving as 
in relieving, was essential. Distinctive, local, in- 
dividual charity needed to be centralized, com- 
pacted, to gain the objective of maximum service. 
So came about the Federation of Charities—one of 
the greatest achievements of the American Jews. 

The loud calls for help that the World War 


UNIQUE IN THE WORLD'S PHILANTHROPY Palit 


precipitated hastened the rounding out of this 
comprehensive clearing house for benevolence. 
Its accomplishments constitute a record which 
it will be difficult to parallel in the way of co-oper- 
ative charity. True hearted men and women have 
put self-consideration aside in devotion to its 
purposes. 

It would be tedious to recount the list of gifts 
and givers, and in many instances publicity 
would do violence to the purpose of the donors 
who gave secretly and whose generosity was re- 
vealed only after they had died. But it is well 
to make note of the nature rather than the mag- 
nitude of the gifts. They were much broader than 
the limits of the race. Most of the important col- 
lezges of America and many lesser ones were 
richly helped; the International School at Wil- 
liams, of which James Bryce was the leading fig- 
ure, was financed by Bernard M. Baruch, and 
Julius Rosenwald, a Jew, gave practically with- 
out limit to maintain the Young Men’s Christian 
Association among the colored people of the 
South. Hospitals, schools for orphans and de- 
pendent children were established or given help 
and there was a generous response to the appeal 
made from almost every part of our complex 
social structure. There was scarcely a limit to 
the range of Jewish giving. These gifts are not 
come from swollen fortunes so large as to be an 


pi2 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


embarrassment to their possessors, but largely 
from the moderately rich and well-to-do. In- 
stead of the slogan of wartimes, “Give till it 
hurts,” the motto proposed by Nathan Straus 
was substituted, “Give till it feels good.” As a 
result within a few years vast sums in the ag- 
gregate have been contributed by Jews to the 
uplifting and charitable uses of society. And 
in addition they have followed the early injunc- 
tion of the Dutch government of New York and 
have taken care that “the poor among them shall 
not become a burden.” And the gifts have been 
supplemented and sanctified by personal service. 
Yet the records of philanthropies of outstand- 
ing character are so abundant and have cut so 
potential a figure that [ am led to quote here 
from the statement of a friend whose knowledge 
is at first hand—as, in a preceding chapter, I 
have quoted from one personally familiar with 
what concerned finance. He spoke as follows: 
“Jacob H. Schiff—long years, among the Jews 
of America, the outstanding. personification of 
stintless philanthropy—yjoined in perfecting dis- 
tribution plans, under the leadership of his rela- 
tive and business partner, Felix M. Warburg,* 
to whose administrative capacity Federation 





*°That great son of Israel (I speak it ardently) that noble son of our 
Tace, that man who knows what sacrifice means, that man who for seven 
years past has laid aside all of his great business and devoted himself 
whole heartedly to the cause of Israel—Felix M. Warburg.”—Louis Marshall 
to the Victory Conference. 


UNIQUE IN THE WORLD'S PHILANTHROPY 213 


achievements chiefly owe their vast scope and 
successes. What Mr. Schiff upon his own in- 
dividual initiative did for charity’s sake makes 
a life-time record of almost matchless magna- 
nimity. In the business world his career was co- 
incident with J. P. Morgan’s, and he won similiar 
distinction—the friend and counsellor of James J. 
Hill, financier of E. H. Harriman, banking inti- 
mate of the Rockefellers, the underwriter of pre- 
mier corporation enterprise, an establisher of 
credit for foreign nations. Applause that the world 
gave to financial activities, though, gratified 
less than the joy found in the simple round that 
the man’s heart led through even his busiest days. 
Of the millions he gave, some were registered in 
great sums to Harvard, and Yale, to Columbia 
and Cornell, and to other institutions of learning, 
with noble allotments to asylums, to hospitals 
and varying welfare agencies that public good 
might be served. It was in giving far away from 
the public eye that Jacob H. Schiff gave most 
and most happily. Such charities, rarely re- 
vealed even to close associates, were broadcast. 

“What particularly is pleasing in such a chron- 
icle as this that comes from authority is the at- 
tending assurance, from the same trusted source, 
that in spontaneous generosity, as in lack of os- 
tentation, Jacob Schiff was typical of the Ameri- 
can Jew in general where fortune vouchsafes the 


214 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


power to give largely. Particularly does the 
cause of education attract. 

“Rarely is a Jewish will recorded without its 
provision for charity, and often for objects out- 
side of the testator’s race and religious faith. In 
Baltimore Cardinal Gibbons was bequeathed $15,- 
O00 by a Jew ‘just to help those who need it.’ In 
St. Louis a Jew is, after his death, discovered 
having done so many charitable deeds that a pub- 
lic school is named in his honor. In Portland 
Ben Selling is glad his seventieth birthday comes 
just in time to provide an excuse for sending an 
extra check for $10,000 to the Oregon State 
war relief fund. The relief fund is objected to 
in Maryland by Jacob Epstein unless he is per- 
mitted to contribute personally ten per cent. of 
every dollar that is raised in the State—this same 
citizen having had traced to him thitherto chari- 
ties that he himself never acknowledges, sur- 
passing, it is said, a million. Charles Rubens, of 
Chicago, stirred by the foreign chapter of 
horrors, impatient for action, calls for speedy 
action in the national relief campaign, or he will 
start Illinois off alone on his own account, at his 
own expense; and when the campaign does 
get under way he is an animating leader in ten 
states. 

“Tt is difficult to select examples for quotation, 
so long and varied the list certified by authori- 


UNIQUE IN THE WORLDS PHILANTHROPY 215 


ties I trust. J. Walter Freiberg, President of 
the Union of Hebrew Congregations, dies re- 
eretting that life has been too short to accomplish 
all he hoped for in communal and religious work 
—and, forthwith, a fund of a quarter of a million 
of dollars is raised by widespread subscription 
that ‘a vision of good will’ shall not fade. Dr. 
Cyrus Adler indicates the needs of the library of 
the Jewish Theological Seminary—and imme- 
diately from Mortimer L. Schiff volumes, many 
of priceless value, come in steady stream. Plans 
are made public of an engineeririg project—har- 
nessing the Jordan’—by which industry is to be 
advanced in Palestine by railways, power, light 
and irrigation development, the initial venture 
calling for $5,000,000, and Americans, who care 
less for dividends than to be helpful, hasten to 
subscribe, led by a $25,000 investment by Justice 
Brandeis, Judge Julian W. Mack being Presi- 
dent of the Development Council. The Palestine 
Foundation Fund, concerning which President 
Harding especially made written recommenda- 
tion, reclaiming lands, promoting agriculture, 
establishing homes and maintaining schools, finds 
similar response, its appeal being for $9,000,000. 

“Nathan Straus broadly typifies the philan- 
thropist practical and persistent. For a quarter 
of a century he has been a personal crusader for 
disease prevention—particularly that children 


216 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


should not be sacrificed. Critics have called his 
milk pasteurization campaigns a hobby; they 
satirized his expenditure of fortunes in care for 
infantile life; any ordinary devotee of any fad 
would have been distracted. But year after year 
he expanded the distinctive work, carrying it 
from New York to other cities of America and 
then devotedly on to Europe, where at Brussels 
an international convention exalts him as almost 
premier in child protective charity—quoted statis- 
tics showing that when he began his pasteuriza- 
tion work in 1892 the death rate of New York 
children under five years of age was over 96 per 
thousand, and had steadily decreased to much 
less than a third of that rate today. 

“In industrial welfare work Jewish interest 
and activities stand out conspicuously. Oversight 
of much of such service is exercised by one of 
our national civic organizations. It includes in 
its surveys, many of the country’s foremost cor- 
porations. Its recent report, condensed, declared 
that, “one of the most generous, most compre- 
hensive, most efficient welfare departments of 
the entire list under our scrutiny is that of a 
cloak and suit company all of whose owners and 
officers and most of whose employes are Jews.’ 

“Apropos of endeavor toward maximum wel- 
fare service, there was significance in official ac- 
tion taken by Will Hays close following his tak- 


UNIQUE IN THE WORLDS PHILANTHROPY 217 


ing office as Postmaster General. He found dis- 
organization at Washington headquarters; inter- 
est and efficiency were lacking; it was essential 
that official personnel should be vivified. ‘I want 
the help of the best specialist in the land,’ he 
broadcasted. And advisers of experience in chorus 
directed him to Dr. Lee K. Frankel of the Metro- 
politan Life Insurance Company. 

“While Theodore Roosevelt was Governor of 
New York a vacancy occurred in the State Board 
of Charities. ‘When you want a man of char- 
ity go where charity has its abiding place,’ he 
commented, ‘go to the Jews—and Simon W. 
Rosendale, who had been Attorney General of 
New York, public service enthusiast, full of 
honors, was drafted for the post. 

“Most Jewish gifts are made thoughtfully. 
For example, Mrs. Mayer Lehman bequeaths to 
Mount Sinai Hospital a large sum to establish a 
chair of preventive medicine—anticipating by a 
couple of years a benefaction with precisely the 
same purpose for which England has acclaimed 
the memory of Sir Samuel Lister. Mount Sinai 
Hospital is typical of practical benevolence at its 
highest mark. All that is humanly possible for 
relief of suffering, for the saving of life, is opera- 
tive there. Millions on millions invested—and 
more millions in constant onward flow for good 
works’ sake—monumental Jewish Great Hearted- 


218 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ness welcoming equally the Christian with the 
Jew! And as at Mount Sinai, in New York— 
just so it is all America over.* How curious now 
sounds that seventeenth century edict under 
whose conditions those first comers here were 
granted admission to our shores: “Provided that 
the poor among them shall not become a 
burden.’ ”’ 

The breadth and extent of the philanthropy of 
the Jew prove this eagerness to perform his 
share in one of the most necessary works of 
society and thus bear testimony to his patriotism. 





*Consult a current official report of any Jewish organization anywhere 
in America, 





CHAPTER XVII 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 


PROBLEMS relating to emigration and the prep- 
aration of emigrants for the duties of citizen- 
ship have very vitally concerned the Jews. The 
policy of the United States has been fluctuating 
and has not been determined upon a scientific 
basis. We have had many proposals of laws 
and congressional committees have investigated 
the subject here and in Europe; but it has not yet 
been satisfactorily settled. The questions grow- 
ing out of the World War make the problem 
more difficult. Desolation abroad brings louder 
knocking on our door, and our policy seems to 
be to close the door more tightly. The Ghetto of 
New York has presented a difficult problem in 
the Americanization of new emigrants. A no- 
table picture of that condition was given by Leo 
N. Levi before a convention of Jews* made up of 
delegates from all parts of the country. 

“The statistics show,” he pointed out, “that of 
a million who came to this country in 20 years, 
probably 90 per cent came into the port of New 
York. The statistics also show that over 60 per 
cent of those who arrive remain in New York, 
certainly in the first instance. 


*Contemplating conditions twenty years ago. 


219 


220 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


“The so-called Ghetto of New York, bounded 
on the north by Houston Street, on the west by 
the Bowery, and running southward and east- 
ward to the river, contains as many Jews as De- 
troit now (1902) contains people. The whole 
city of Detroit, if crowded into that little section, 
would displace a similar number of Jews who. 
have come to this country from Southeastern 
Europe in the last 20 years, and their descend- 
ants. And that is a very small territory. There 
are thousands, yea, tens of thousands of citizens 
in the city of New York, a good many of them 
Jews, who have never set foot in that territory. 

“In that region the language that is spoken 
is the *Yiddish of the Jews. In the stores, the 
articles they were accustomed to purchase in the 
land of their nativity are offered for sale. The 
signs are written in their own language in the 
Hebrew character. The cafes and places of 
amusement, the theater hall, the dance hall, 
everything is there which they were accustomed 
to, and whatever their tastes, whether good or 
evil, demand, is purveyed for their gratification. 
They think in their own language; they can wor- 
ship there according to the rituals they are accus- 
tomed to; the atmosphere is one which they are 





*“Viddish” is a jargon used only by the Russian, Polish, and Roumanian 
Jews. It is a mixture of old German with Russian, Polish, and other 
tongues. It is unknown to the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, and is not 
used in Germany, England, or France. It is, therefore, unwarranted to 
generalize as to its use, 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 221 


acquainted with, and all other atmospheres are 
foreign to them. 

“Now if you take any one of this audience and 
suddenly transport him to a foreign land, 1f there 
be a group of Americans in any one portion of 
that foreign country, it would be perfectly nat- 
ural for you and me to gravitate to that little 
colony. And we would not like to get out into 
the interior of the country where we did not know 
the language of the country, the geography of 
the country, the habits of the people; where no 
one could understand us, and we could under- 
stand no one. A feeling of homesickness would 
overcome us, our hearts would become terrified, 
and if that would be true of us who are presumed 
to have at least some understanding of the con- 
figuration of this globe and of the difference in 
nationalities and habits and customs of peoples, 
how much more so must that be true of a class 
of people whose whole world had no larger ho- 
rizon than the little town in which they were born 
and raised in some obscure part of Southeastern 
Europe? 

“For them to come to America means for them 
to come to New York. They have an idea that 
what lies beyond the limits of New York is a wil- 
derness; that once they get away from the Ghetto 
they lose the friends they were accustomed to; 


222 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


that if sickness, trouble or death comes they have 
no one to turn to. 

“If they are religiously inclined—and the Rus- 
sian Jews are—they have no place in which they 
can worship in harmony outside of the Ghetto. 
And so they cling there tenaciously, even to the 
brink of starvation, rather than go out into a wil- 
derness or to give up that which is so precious to 
them. 

“But the limit has been reached. It was 
reached long ago. You have heard papers here 
on the subject of tuberculosis, mentioned by 
President Roosevelt in his message also. No 
man, however intelligent or industrious in his 
reading and his research, can form the remotest 
idea of the conditions prevailing in the lower por- 
tion of New York, unless he goes there and makes 
personal inspection. 

“They must be educated to a better under- 
standing of the conditions that prevail in the in- 
terior of this country, of opportunities offered 
everywhere for men able to work, to lift them- 
selves and their families. That is an educational 
campaign which is proceeding systematically, te- 
diously and painfully slow in the lower east side 
of New York. 

‘When I took a visitor through the Educa- 
tional Alliance building in New York, and told 
him the average attendance there was 7,000 a day 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 223 


year in and year out, he was amazed, as almost 
any one unfamiliar with the situation would be, 
that it does not make a greater impression upon 
the tone and the civilization that obtain here, 
and the answer to it is: That if we had 20 insti- 
tutions located at proper places in the lower east 
side of New York, each a duplicate of the Educa- 
tional Alliance, each one would have a like daily 
attendance, so stupendous is that problem there. 

*“We must deal with this question in a catholic 
spirit. We must remember a man can not get 
to the top unless he climbs from the bottom. We 
must remember those who came to this country 
50 years ago had to climb from the bottom to the 
top, and we ought to be manly enough to know 
there is nothing more cowardly and disgraceful 
than to climb to the top of a wall by a ladder and 
then kick the ladder away so that nobody can 
climb up afterwards.” 

In presenting this striking picture of the New 
York Ghetto—as it confronted him twenty years 
ago*—Mr. Levi threw a clear light upon our 
entire emigration problem. We can understand 
the magnitude of the burden thrust upon 1,000,- 
000 Jews to find immigration doubling the 
number of their race in 20 years. Although the 
Jewish isolation in New York is extreme, it is 
approached by some of the other races. Very 





*APPENDIX: ‘‘Americanism’s Forward March.” 


224 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


much of the emigration of the last three decades 
has resisted amalgamation. Large groups have 
ténaciously clung to the language and customs 
and methods of thinking which they knew in 
their native land and as to some of these groups, 
intelligent effort has been sadly lacking. The 
process of converting much of this material into 
American citizens has been discouragingly slow. 
But the Jews at great cost have carried on an 
aggressive work in order to transform the Jew- 
ish immigrant into a useful and law-abiding 
member of the American Commonwealth. The 
Ghetto that Leo N. Levi lamented is steadily dis- 
appearing. The problem of immigration has 
been more acute in connection with the Jews 
than with any other race. The inundation of these 
people who came to us resulted from religious 
and race persecution. In the greater number of 
instances they did not come as a result of the 
individual volition exercised by most incomers. 
They were driven from the lands of their na- 
tivity. They were inheritors of the poverty and 
ignorance of generations of ancestors. The ef- 
fort that the American Jews have made to trans- 
form these people and put them in the way of 
becoming good American citizens is wholly ad- 
mirable and is unsurpassed by any work done in 
Americanization. 

My expression of definite views on the sub- 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 225 


ject of the composite character of our citizenship, 
and the dangers that may accentuate or kindle 
antagonisms of race or sect, and produce a dis- 
cord deplorable to be witnessed in our democ- 
racy, has never been mistakable. One cannot lend 
weight to one’s views by quotations from himself 
but, [ am unable to give better expression of 
them upon the phase of the subject I am consider- 
ing than appears in some lectures of mine at Yale 
University in 1915.* 

“Tf considerations of race or creed are to enter 
into our politics,” I then said, “the State will be 
deprived of the judgment of large sections of its 
citizens upon public questions which should alone 
be considered by them and our politics will be- 
come the arena of struggles between races and 
sects, our statute books defaced by class laws 
and men proscribed from public office or put into 
it for no better reason than one based upon their 
creed or race. The men who controlled our 
country down to the time when our Constitution 
was formed were animated by a sincere love of 
liberty. They were filled with the fear of the 
unrestrained forms of government from which 
they had suffered persecution and which had 
driven them into exile. 

“The most important element in establishing 
the greatness of America may be traced to the 





*“The Liberty of Citizenship’ (Dodge Course) Yale University Press, 1915. 


226 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


character of the earlier emigrants, Those emi- 
grants were of the soundest and strongest men 
that could be found in the countries of northern 
and western Europe. Mr. Darwin has pointed 
to our nation as illustrating his theory of natural 
selection. The danger of crossing the ocean in 
the little ships of that time was very great, and 
the dangers which the imagination portrayed 
were even greater. The perils of a wilderness 
infested by savages and wild beasts were sufh- 
ciently formidable in reality but they seemed 
even more alarming when they were looked upon 
from the eastern shores of the Atlantic. Such 
forbidding dangers could make no appeal to 
weaklings and cowards. They beckoned strong 
and brave men to meet them, and strong* and 
brave men responded. All along the Atlantic, 
settlements were established by a hardy stock 
and the sterling seed was sown from which a 
great nation was destined to spring. 

“It came about that not merely during the pe- 
riod before the Revolution, but for a half-century 
or more afterwards, this process of natural se- 
lection went on, and we see America in its mak- 
ing taking unto itself a virile, enterprising and 
daring body of citizens. The institutions adopted 
by people of such a character could not be other- 
wise than free. The atmosphere was charged 
with democracy and equality. Each man was in 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 224, 


the eye of the law and of public opinion as good 
as every other and endowed with the same oppor- 
tunity. 

“But the dangers and hardships of immigra- 
tion gradually melted away. It became as safe 
to cross the sea in modern ships as to remain at 
home. The savages and wild beasts had disap- 
peared and the wilderness had given place to 
fields of wheat and corn. Men came over from 
the same motives that would lead them to move 
from one city or town to another in the same 
country. There is nothing in immigration today 
especially marked by dangers that call for heroes 
to meet them. Ideas cross the ocean with the 
same freedom as men and much more quickly. 
We have at last struck the broad level of the 
world, and everything political, social, or human 
finds its way to America. Just as every physical 
disease that afflicted the bodies of men in Europe 
has appeared on this side of the ocean, so all the 
problems that attacked their minds were sure to 
appear also. They have already arrived and 
we are exempt from nothing that is human and 
can waive nothing away by calling it un-Ameri- 
can. We possessed at the beginning a clean 
slate which committed us to nothing, and we re- 
ceived the development coming from our free in- 
stitutions and our splendid stock. Such was the 
foundation and it was indeed sound. 


228 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


“And what of the superstructure? Our free- 
dom of access, our hospitality, our appealing 
opportunity, have brought to us each decade mil- 
lions of people of stocks alien to that by which 
our institutions were established. We have been 
put under an extraordinary strain. And just as 
England and other nations have in the past 
shown their colonizing energy by sending out 
offshoots, planting them upon distant and empty 
territories and building up new nations in their 
own image, so we are displaying at least an equal 
colonizing energy in the way in which we have 
received these vast numbers and are assimilating 
them and making them over essentially into our 
image. 

“I do not mean that the nation has in no re- 
spect been changed or modified in the process. 
The developments from these recent additions 
to our population have not yet clearly appeared, 
but we already can see enough to permit us to be- 
lieve that as a result the nation will have not only 
a more cosmopolitan but a richer and a more 
versatile citizenship, that our free institutions 
will essentially remain intact and the spirit of our 
democracy be broadened. 

“The influence which the mixture of races is 
likely to exert upon our institutions and civiliza- 
tion is certainly not less important than the char- 
acter of the race type ultimately to be evolved. 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 229 


We have seen little as yet of the operation of the 
commonly accepted idea of the ‘melting pot’ and 
have witnessed little change in the individual 
type, but 1f America is to be such a melting pot, 
the same thing is likely to be true of the whole 
earth, which is becoming through the marvels of 
transportation a very small affair. And just as 
all races descended from Adam, so this tendency 
of the movement of peoples to break down boun- 
daries of race would be to lead the procession of 
the divergent species back to Adam again and 
give us a single and restored race of the original 
consistency. But the process will surely be slow. 
Indeed I am skeptical enough to doubt that this 
standardized world citizen or American citizen 
is destined to appear in a future which 1s not very 
distant. I fancy the world for mundane purposes 
will be as well off without either and that to in- 
crease the monotony of its citizens will not con- 
tribute to the interest of the world. The race land- 
scape, if that term is permissible, will be no less in- 
teresting if it shall maintain its present general 
features even though the divisions between the 
fields may not be so abrupt but may blend into 
each other. The strong tendency is toward the 
preservation of the integrity of the race stocks. 
“But there is a practical truth in the melting 
pot notion likely to be seen in times which are 
not remote. The fusion is more likely to be wit- 


230 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


nessed in our general achievement and in the 
sum of our civilization. If we shall prove rea- 
sonably homogeneous in one respect and remain 
devoted to democracy and the maintenance of 
free institutions, then, under the stimulus of our 
freedom, we may hope to witness in our country 
the noblest achievements, the fairest fruitage of 
the different races in our population. 

‘We shall have a melting pot worth while, if 
out of it shall come a fusion and blending of the 
best works of all races and a more many sided 
and a fairer civilization. Thus we may also 
await with complacency the far away time when 
we shall have all racial traits blended in each 
individual, with possibly the worst traits exag- 
erated and the best ones neutralizing each other. 
It will perhaps be as safe to take our chances 
with the old races, modified as they will doubtless 
be, but not merged into each other, nor with the 
identity of the original stocks destroyed. 

“Projects for the restriction of immigration I 
will say in passing should be very cautiously un- 
dertaken. So far as they shall operate to exclude 
defective classes they are good. 

“But one who has been denied opportunities 
of education cannot be considered a defective, 
and he may possess the best elements of citizen- 
ship. The illiteracy line furnishes a test of ex- 
clusion simply and not a test of fitness. 


FOREIGN DESOLATION’S URGENT APPEAL 24 


“If we aimed at shutting out anarchists, we 
could more certainly accomplish our purpose by 
denying admission to all who could read and 
write than by excluding those who could do 
neither.” 

I see no reason to modify the views I then ex- 
pressed. As to the Jewish immigrants who have 
been coming to us in the last two decades, it may 
fairly be said that they are no more poor and 
helpless than were the first company that landed 
in the realm of Peter Stuyvesant. After one or 
two generations of development they or their 
descendants are likely to repeat what we have al- 
ready seen and add another illustration to those 
already afforded of the value of the Jew and his 
works in America. 

We have witnessed wonderful things done in 
the transformation of alien and difficult peoples, 
after two or three generations of the play of 
American life and institutions upon them. Cer- 
tainly the Jews do not present the most dis- 
couraging features of the problem. Their deep 
poverty and the great numbers of them driven 
in a brief time to seek a refuge may for a time 
demand excessive labor and care; but these have 
been supplied by the fellow members of their 
race. They do not come to us like so many im- 
migrants who migrate like the birds only to re- 
turn again to their country. The Jews have no 


woe PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


temptation to go back to Poland or Russia. They 
soon adjust themselves to the conditions of 
American life. They work, they enter trade, they 
gradually become a part of our social order and 
however untrained and even hopeless they may 
seem in the beginning, they steadily improve. 


GEAARTRR EX LTT 
AMERICA’S NOBLEST History At STAKE 


Mr. G. K. Chesterton, who has written enter- 
tainingly about Jerusalem and the Jew, avows he 
has no prejudice against him and that he is will- 
ing a Jew should be an Archbishop or sit upon 
the Woolsack; but something should be done to 
mark the fact that he is a Jew or, at least, that he 
is not an Englishman. ‘This, it seems, could be 
done in a way similar to that in vogue in the 
Middle Ages. It could be done by the costume. 
If he did not wear the ancient “Cap” he might 
at least, like the good Asiatic that he is, wear 
the turban. So much Mr. Chesterton demands 
for the ethnological or historical proprieties. This 
idea of Mr. Chesterton’s is an interesting one 
and its complete application would add greatly 
to the picturesqueness of England. Have the 
different subjects of the King array themselves 
in the costumes of the countries of their sup- 
posed origin. The kilted Scotchman with his 
bare legs and cow hair, the African subject with 
a still more tropical display and those of Ameri- 
can descent dressed in feathers and war paint in 
deference to the fashions of the aborigines, would 
make a many-hued England, even if it did not de- 

233 


234 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


liver her from all the dangers of her race prob- 
lems. 

The real difficulty is that this solution, admir- 
able and artistic as it is, does not go quite deep 
enough. What should the Englishman wear and 
who is the Englishman ethnologically? Is he not 
himself an imported article and indeed no more 
recent than the Jew? The Jew crossed the chan- 
nel with the legions of Caesar, when Mr. Chester- 
ton’s forbears were disporting themselves in 
their savage pursuits in the forests of Northern 
Europe or were skirting the shores of Denmark, 
pursuing the fish or more human prey. It is true 
that the so-called English drove out the Jew as 
a preliminary to rescuing the Holy Sepulchre, but 
a happening like that should not have influence 
upon such an important question as costume, 
when we are seeking to recognize historical pro- 
prieties. 

Why not at once go to the very bottom of 
the problem and frankly recognize that we all 
swarmed from the Asiatic hive, Mr. Chesterton 
with the rest of us, and that we should all take 
to the turban; that the most of us belong to wan- 
dering nations like the Jews, and do not strike our 
roots deeply into the soils on which we now hap- 
pen to live. The whole earth is the abode of 
man. We areall at home wherever we are. But 
the Jew alone of all nationalities can, it seems, ac- 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 235 


quire no prior rights by settlement, and indeed 
no rights at all. The Englishman or the German 
becomes a proprietor, but the Jew, who preceded 
him, is only an alien and if not put in a ghetto or 
a cage must be branded in some appropriate 
fashion that society may be warned. 

But amiable ridicule kills nobody and is an in- 
nocuous survival of the practices of an expiring 
order. That it is, however, upon a dangerous sub- 
ject is shown by agitations that have taken place 
well within our time when in every country ex- 
cept Russia and Roumania toleration is supposed 
to have arrived. 

There is the case of Dreyfus, so recent as the 
ieumcecadce OL (the) nineteenth century.) Ele 
was tried by court martial and convicted of 
furnishing Germany with French military 
secrets, and he received a sentence little short 
of barbarous. A ferocious furore was aroused 
and the hatred towards the Jews was kindled 
again. Some circumstances pointing to in- 
justice appeared, and a review was demanded 
by Zola and others and fought for most bravely. 
The agitation against the Jews was heightened, 
the more deeply the affair was probed, until Zola 
was compelled to fly from France and an attempt 
was made to assassinate Labori, the eloquent 
counsel of Dreyfus. But at last the truth was 
dragged to the light before the high Court of 


236 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


France; and it was revealed that French military 
secrets had indeed been sold to Germany, but 
that Dreyfus was wholly innocent and had been 
convicted by forged and perjured evidence, in 
order to shield non-Jewish officers of the staff who 
had done the deed and received the money and 
who found it convenient to play upon the preju- 
dice against the Jew in order to escape with their 
lives and loot. If such a thing could be done 
in a chivalrous and highly civilized state like 
France, what may not be expected elsewhere? 

A similar thing was witnessed about the same 
time in Austria. Charges against a Jew were 
fabricated so shocking that a general persecution 
of the race followed. But in the trial before a 
court so prejudiced that conviction seemed a cer- 
tainty, the cross-examination by able counsel ut- 
terly destroyed the case and acquittal could not 
be avoided. 

A few years previously a formidable attempt 
to revive proscription had been made in Germany 
and it required all the strength of Bismarck and 
of the liberal sentiment to thwart it. Race perse- 
cution and especially persecution of a race so long 
hunted as the Jews is a fire easy to be kindled and 
hard to be put out. There probably never was a 
time more favorable for doing away with it alto- 
gether than in this period following the World 
War. The Jews were loyal to the flag of every 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 237 


country in which they lived, unless of those East 
Europe countries whose governments were con- 
spiracies against their own freedom. Loyalty is 
a phrase with a depth and sweep that make its 
use most unfitting to express the relation which 
one would hold toward an admitted tyranny. 

In the many fields of our complex civilization, 
in science, art, literature, finance, business, and 
those good works which flower out into a noble 
philanthropy not limited by race lines, he is do- 
ing his full part and is in generous rivalry with 
the members of every other race. What good 
ground can be imagined for continuing to bait 
the Jew? Each one of the race should obviously 
be judged on his own merits and should receive 
neither immunity nor condemnation because he 
is a Jew. If a Jew goes wrong it is because he 
is a Jew, but if a Christian does the same thing 
it is because he is dishonest. If the fault were 
charged against the individual instead of the 
race then a Jew might be appraised at his own 
merit as are other members of the community. 

It is undeniable that the Jews have shown a 
high order of political talent during the short pe- 
riod of time in which it has been possible for 
them to take part in politics. The career of 
Disraeli furnishes the most striking illustration. 
Although he was pitted against Gladstone who 
was the foremost Englishman of his century, he 


238 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


showed himself in spite of the fiercest prejudice 
a successful party leader, and rose to the chief 
place in the government of the British Empire. 
At the same time Lasker, another Jew, was the 
leader of the liberal party in Germany and 
Gambetta, a part Jew, was showing himself the 
most brilliant parliamentary orator of France. 
And among the Jews who have become con- 
spicuous in their relation to the administration 
of governments, one must not overlook Walter 
Rathenau who had become the rising hope of 
Germany, and, indeed, of Europe, when his light 
was quenched by an infamous assassination. 
They have also attained eminence in the law, 
and may be found upon the highest courts in 
Europe and America and among the foremost 
lawyers of different countries. Lord Reading 
as Chief Justice, Ambassador and Viceroy illus- 
trates the extraordinary ascent of his race in 
Great Britain from the time when the first 
Jew was accepted as a juryman in 1835. I 
have already referred to Judah P. Benjamin, 
who attained high distinction in America, and 
afterwards went to England, and became one 
of the leaders of the English bar. One 
can understand how such a race might be 
suppressed in law and politics through envy, 
but not through a patriotic desire to conserve 
valuable elements of citizenship. Members of 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 239 


other races can compete with them on terms 
of equality, but in order to do that they will need 
to display industry and use their talents to the 
best advantage. The Jews serve to put their 
Christian fellow citizens upon their metal and 
summon their strongest qualities into action. 

The Jew has ina high degree the spirit of ad- 
venture in practical affairs. He will bravely put 
his stake upon his judgment and if losses come 
he will accept them with serenity and adventure 
again. He is sleepless in his enterprise and in- 
dustry. How he made practical use of his tal- 
ents during the middle ages, in a way that ad- 
vanced civilization, has been portrayed by a great 
historian, W. E. H. Lecky: 

“Whilst those around them were grovelling in 
the darkness of besotted ignorance, while jug- 
eling miracles and lying relics were themes on 
which almost all Europe was expatiating, while 
the intellect of Christendom, enthralled by count- 
less persecutions, had sunk into a deadly torpor 
in which all love of inquiry and all search of 
truth were abandoned, the Jews were still pur- 
suing the path of knowledge, amassing learning 
and stimulating progress, with the same un- 
flinching constancy that they manifested in their 
faith. They were the most skillful physicians, 
and ablest financiers and among the most pro- 
found philosophers. While they were only sec- 


240 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ond to the moderns in the cultivation of natural 
science, they were also the chief interpreters to 
Western Europe of Arabian learning.” 

An accusation commonly made against the Jew 
is that he is dishonest in trade and will take un- 
fair advantage of those less skillful than himself. 
But surely the Jew does not possess a monopoly 
of dishonest practices. The line between honesty 
and dishonesty by no means coincides with the 
lines between races. Very good English names 
for instance are associated even at this day 
with the infamous practice of peonage by which 
in some states of the American Union ignorant 
black men are cheated of their labor which is 
all they possess. The most shady things that 
were ever charged against the Jew in finance and 
trade can be matched by the doings of so- 
called Christians. While there is room for 1m- 
provement in the character of business dealing's 
between men, they have improved greatly over 
what they once were. It is an assumption to say 
that Jews generally employ standards of business 
lower than those of other men. But each Jew 
should be judged upon his own merits, and not 
upon what some other Jew has done. It would 
be easy to discredit any element in our citizenship 
if its black sheep were to be selected and held 
out as typical. Ifa Jew shows himself to be dis- 
honest, pushing, arrogant, regardless of the 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 241 


rights of other men, he will be held fully respon- 
sible to the opinion of those about him. Society 
may be trusted to deal with him, but there should 
be only condemnation for the practice of judging 
a man because of prejudice against his race or of 
judging an entire race by what some member of 
it has done. 

In considering what is called the Jewish prob- 
lem, one finds it a fluctuating rather than a fixed 
problem, because of a variance of opinion as to 
what constitutes a Jew. To some he is an ethno- 
logical and to others a merely theological being. 
Some look no deeper than the name which long 
since ceased to be an unerring guide. It might 
indicate those who are frankly Jews and who, 
like Jacob Schiff, are proud of their lineage, but by 
no means those who, for one reason or another, 
have taken themselves from the fold and have 
become what Mr. Thomas W. Lawson has 
termed “Gentile-plated Jews.” 

It seems certain that the numbers of the race 
must be reduced if only those are to be reckoned 
as Jews who, after long periods of race slavery 
and a dispersion over the world for sixty genera- 
tions, still possess the unadulterated blood of 
Abraham. There are said to be Mongolian Jews 
in Russia. There are those who are called Jews 
in Poland who possess none of the ordinary phys- 
ical characteristics of the race. But the persist- 


242 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


ence of their religious faith, the comparative 
segregation of the race, brought about by its own 
customs, as well as by the long-continued perse- 
cution visited upon it, and its own remarkable 
vitality, have preserved unimpaired among a 
great number the ancient Hebrew tradition and 
the general physical and mental characteristics 
of the race. It is to that large remnant that the 
Jewish problem essentially relates. 

The Hebrew commonwealth in ancient Pales- 
tine was republican in character. It was demo- 
cratic and progressive, compared with other 
nations in the times when it existed. While 
slavery was universal, especially among oriental 
nations, the code of the Jews secured the slave 
humane treatment and at stated intervals pro- 
vided for his emancipation. There was also at 
recular times a remission of debts, and, as I have 
said, the law contained a prohibition of interest 
and a return of the titles of land to the families 
under whom they had become encumbered, so 
that a few men could not secure the ownership of 
the earth. The treatment of women was far 
better than was accorded them in the neighbor- 
ing nations. That the modern Jew retains the 
quality shown by him in the very ancient times, 
and is able to move forward, is amply proven by 
his deeds. 

When the monarchy was established, it is 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 243 


doubtless true that some of the Jewish kings 
showed themselves as despotic and as wicked 
as other kings, but they did violence to the 
genius of the people as shown in their laws and 
in the general trend of their history. 

There is no Bourbon solidarity in the race; 
but its members divide much as other races divide, 
although many of its leaders incline strongly to- 
wards really progressive policies. A good illus- 
tration of their attitude upon such questions may 
be seen in the American slavery abolition move- 
ment. There were notable instances of heroism 
among the Jews in the battle against slavery. 
Some of the members of the race, as of other 
races, accepted it as an established institution 
under the protection of the law and feared that 
agitation might destroy the Union. But others 
vehemently denounced it; and not alone in the 
safe precincts of Boston and New York, but 
where slavery actually existed. Among those 
outspoken against it was Dr. David Einhorn, 
a rabbi of Baltimore. Commenting upon the 
formation of the Republican party, he declared 
in October, 1856, that he could not share the 
fears of those who thought the formation of 
that party would lead to the dissolution of the 
Union, ‘if only for the reason that if the Union 
in fact rests on such a thoroughly immoral 
basis it would appear to be neither capable of 


244 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


surviving nor fit to survive.” He kept up the 
fight until, just before the outbreak of the war 
it was found necessary to protect him by a vol- 
unteer guard composed of young men of his 
own congregation, and finally he sought shelter 
with his family in Philadelphia. Here subse- 
quently he was elected an honorary member of 
the Union League with another rabbi, Dr. Sa- 
bato Morais, who had eloquently denounced 
slavery. 

A list of remarkable names may be made from 
those who are partly Jewish in origin. Among 
them are Sir John Herschel, Robert Browning, 
Bret Harte, Sir John Millais, Charles Kingsley, 
Edwin Booth, Leon Gambetta, Sir Arthur Sulli- 
van, Francis Turner Palgrave, Marshall Mas- 
sena, General William Booth, John Howard 
Payne and James R. Mann who for years was 
Republican leader in Congress. The list might 
easily—and particularly as to our own country— 
be far prolonged. 

There are special fields to which I have scarcely 
referred, in which we may expect from our 
Jewish people notable contributions. The stage, 
as a distinctive example, has everything to hope 
from a race which has given it Rachel and Sarah 
Bernhardt and Von Sonnenthal and the father of 
Edwin Booth. When we shall develop an 
American atmosphere for music, who are more 


AMERICA’S NOBLEST HISTORY AT STAKE 245 


likely than the Jews—with Felix Mendelssohn, 
Meyerbeer, Halevy, Rubenstein, and Offenbach— 
to give us a place in that art in which we have 
been a laggard? 

We may look for very much from them in 
literature, not merely on account of the brilliant 
past but because of what Jew writers are already 
doing in America. What may we not expect 
from a race that can claim in the list of its 
writers and thinkers such shining names, as 
Heine and Spinoza? Jewish writers in our coun- 
try are showing form, imagination, strength, 
sanity and the capacity to hold attention. 

I am not now referring to the unparalleled 
contributions which the Jews made in ancient 
times and which entitle them to general homage. 
But a reference to these contributions must not 
be omitted for they put the whole world under 
tribute. President Eliot said on the occasion of 
the presentation by Jacob H. Schiff of the “Se- 
mitic Museum” to Harvard University in 1903: 

“Mr. Oscar S. Straus, in his book on the 
‘Origin of Republican Government,’ has clearly 
shown how the Puritan Commonwealth was 
modelled on the Jewish Commonwealth under 
the Judges, and Professor Charles Eliot Norton 
has just said that we owe to the Semitic race 
the conception of righteousness as a national ideal 
embodied in law. This ideal characterizes the 


246 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Old Testament and indeed both Testaments. 
There is another infinitely precious conception 
which we owe to the same race, a conception ex- 
pressed more fully in the New Testament, though 
not lacking in the Old, the purest and loftiest 
conception mankind has ever won of domestic 
love and joy. Therefore, I say we owe to these 
Semitic peoples, the peoples from which come the 
three greatest religions of the modern world or 
of any age of the world, the greatest spiritual 
conceptions of all times.” 

With reference to the conception of the deity 
which came from the Jewish race, or through it 
as an inspiration, John Fiske says: “The con- 
ception of Jehovah set forth in the writings of 
the prophets was the loftiest conception of deity 
anywhere attained before the time of Christ. 
In ethical value it immeasurably surpassed any- 
thing to be found in the pantheon of the Greeks 
and Romans.” 


GHA PVE Roxio 
NATIONAL Duty UNMISTAKABLE 


In accustomed terseness, President Eliot epit- 
omizes as essential to our times “a wise public 
opinion.” Sinister agitations are ill defined. 
Their activity, aggressiveness, intellectual per- 
versions, motivate movements not measurable by 
standards which we here have hitherto accepted 
as established. Rabid preachments at the street 
curbs, the snaky sapiences of new-light litera- 
ture, grotesque night-riding revivals, are signifi- 
cant, it may be, of nothing effectively, lastingly 
dangerous—impudent impotencies, perhaps, at 
worst. Such vulgarities pass. 

What more urgently challenges perturbation, 
a genuine peril, may be apprehended from prac- 
titioners of piratical politics. 

America generations ago had her spasm of 
Know-Nothing. Is it possible to install repeti- 
tion of that hideousness? I cannot believe it of 
my countrymen. Yet flagrant is the evidence 
that amongst us are some whose ambitions veer 
that way—some who diligently contrive evil 
propaganda in the very name of Nationalism. 
Praters of 100 per cent. Americanism, they 
parade the monitory role: they shudder at the 
forwardness of Semitism, they exploit chimeras 
of imperilled Christian institutions. Affectations 
so various they exalt that casual observation may 

247 


248 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


rate their lucubrations as but ridiculous. That 
would be careless conclusion. 

There is operating a program which is sordid, 
which is calculated, which coordinates with pow- 
erful resources. Patriotism is preached. Shame- 
fully different is object aimed at. 

It has been in grave reluctance, with sense of 
civic humiliation, that I have been brought to 
realization of facts—the nearness of menaces— 
thrusting upon us unmistakable national duty. 

I have striven hard to preserve optimistic vi- 
sion. But from others, patriotically enkindled, 
recognizing that “a new and dangerous spirit” 
is being introduced into our national political 
life, there has issued an epochal address to Amer- 
ica, signed by a host of notable “citizens of Gen- 
tile birth and Christian faith,” setting forth anx- 
ieties over vindictiveness “designed to foster 
distrust and suspicion of our fellow citizens of 
Jewish ancestry and faith—distrust and suspicion 
of their loyalty and patriotism.” 

John Spargo, author, publicist, non-Jew, was 
the initiator of this address; and “neither directly 
nor indirectly did any person of Jewish ancestry 
or faith, or any Jewish organization have any- 
thing to do with its preparation or publication.” 

Outstanding names are on the roll—the fore- 
most of the Nation—led by Woodrow Wilson, 





*AppEeNDIX: “Loyal and Intelligent Citizenship.” 


NATIONAL DUTY UNMISTAKABLE 249 


William H. Taft, William J. Bryan and Cardinal 
O’Connell, such a roster as has induced a quali- 
fied commentator to say: “Probably no similar 
document ever bore so distinguished an array of 
signatures.” 

“We call,” say Woodrow Wilson and William 
H. Taft and their eminent confreres, “in particu- 
lar, we call upon all those who are molders of 
public opinion—the clergy and ministers of all 
Christian churches, publicists, teachers, editors 
and statesmen—to strike at this un-American and 
un-Christian agitation.” 

Solemn warning. Sacred summons. 


If there is one particular in which the course 
of the American Commonwealth is clear it is that 
it should strive to incorporate into one harmoni- 
ous whole the various races of which it is com- 
posed and that it should not tolerate the creation 
of a variety of social and political ghettos which 
shall enclose the different race groups. To do 
that would be to contrive against our own great- 
ness and permanence as a state. 

We have grave problems enough already with- 
out making our country the theatre of any new 
race contentions. We should strive to allay the 
strife between the Saxon and the Celt, the 
Teuton and the Slav, the Gentile and the Jew, in 
order that we may really become one people, 


250 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


instead of lighting again the fire of Jewish 
proscription, and adding that to the other race 
contentions that distract us. 

Those statesmen at Versailles who presumed to 
lay the foundations of a new world, in one respect 
took a long leap backward into the past. They 
attempted to reconstruct the universe upon eth- 
nological lines, and disregarded the long exercise 
of the forces of political gravitation and the 
slow historical evolution which had built up great 
states upon the ruins of the Roman Empire. At 
the same time that they impaired the cosmopoli- 
tan structure of nations, and aimed to make the 
lines of nations and races coincide with each 
other, they intensified the effect of political divi- 
sions among men and augmented the sharpness 
of the future clashings of nations by adding the 
antagonism of race. 

This policy portends a future of national rival- 
ries and race feuds leading to war. We must 
see to it that the American stage is set for no 
such a drama. 

The founding of this nation was a long step 
taken towards amity between races and the gov- 
ernment of men not by prejudice and persecution 
but by equal laws. In view of the signal result 
attained, has the time come for America to re- 
nounce her mission? Let her adhere to it and 
the “Jewish problem” will work itself out. Let 





| 
: 
! 


NATIONAL DUTY UNMISTAKABLE 251 


each man come individually in contact with our 
institutions and stand or fall on his own merits 
and not as a member of some group or race. 
Only thus shall we have the kind of society that 
is in keeping with American institutions. Our 
government should treat men as men and not 
as members of a race. 

It is not easy of belief that an organized move- 
ment should have been undertaken in America 
to stir up race hatred against the Jewish people. 
But in the reaction from high ideals that has set 
in since the World War almost anything is credi- 
ble, although the essential American standards 
of the past have not changed, and they may be 
trusted to assert themselves again. 

The question of Americanism is by no means 
settled by the so simple a formula as that con- 
tained in the boast that one is “100 per cent. 
American.” One needs not ask whether there 
were any Americans in that mob in Illinois which 
during the War seized an innocent and unarmed 
German and took his life. It was only a pack of 
commonplace cowards, who shamed our soldiers 
in the field and tarnished the name of America. 
Neither have those any trace of Americanism 
about them who, as members of a secret society 
of outlaws, will drag men from their homes at 
night and atrociously treat them. 

There is no difficulty in denying the claim of 


252 PATRIOTISM OF THE AMERICAN JEW 


Americanism to those who stir up hatred against 
any class of their fellow citizens by the publica- 
tion of falsehoods and who resort to the polluted 
and corrupt tactics of revolutionary Russia. 

So far as the Jews are concerned they played 
a most important part in the discovery of this 
continent. ‘They were honorably associated with 
our colonial development. Although few in 
number, they helped mightily to finance the 
Revolution; and they bore a brave part under 
Washington in arms. They have gained honor- 
able distinction in every war in which the country 
has been engaged. In World War devotion they 
made a noble record, and established beyond all 
question their title to be known as patriotic 
Americans. They have been commended by our 
Presidents from Washington to Coolidge. They 
have formed a vital element in our country in 
peaceful. times, and, in view of what they are 
and what they have been, we may expect from 
them in the future large contributions to our 
civilization. 

The United States is the great nation of 
modern times which has established itself on the 
basis of equality. It has especially pointed the 
way to Europe for the emancipation of the Jews, 
and its influence in this leadership has been 
world-wide. 

The man today who attempts to restore the 


on iit, se Si a ee _ 


NATIONAL DUTY UNMISTAKABLE 253 


old order and to arouse a race hatred runs 
counter to the fundamentals of our government. 
America is the last place in which to carry on 
such a work, for its prosecution involves a 
declaration of war against the vital parts of our 
institutions and what is noblest in our history. 





Appendix 





APPENDIX 257 


AMERICANISM 


We fail lamentably where we do not preach effectively 
tolerance as well as justice and security and respect for 
the rights of others as much as liberty. And while I hold 
these views as to all peoples, irrespective of race or creed 
or condition, I am especially earnest in my protests 
against the frequent reversions to barbarity in the treat- 
ment of the Jewish citizens of many lands, a people who 
have commanded always my admiration by their genius, 
industry, endurance, patience and persistence, the virtue 
and devotion of their domestic lives, their broad charity 
and philanthropy and their obedience to the laws under 
which they live. 

WARREN G. HARDING. 


No Jew should ever look upon our institutions as an 
alien. His people have had their tremendous share in 
making them. If they are imperfect, his is a part of the 
blame. If they surpass all others, his is a part of the 
glory. In either event, they belong to him equally with 
others. 

CALVIN COOLIDGE. 


My attention has been brought to what would appear 
to be an organized campaign against the Jews in America. 
Such a campaign is entirely at variance with America’s 
best traditions and ideals, and its only effect can be the 
introduction of religious tests to determine citizenship 
and a reign of prejudice and race hatred wholly incom- 
patible with loyal and intelligent American citizenship. 
To discriminate against any race or religion is utterly 
un-American; and I, therefore wish to register my pro- 
test against any campaign against the Jews or any other 
religious groups constituting the great citizenship of this 
country. 

WILLIAM CARDINAL O’CONNELL. 


258 APPENDIX 


CIVILIZATION—BIGOTRY 


What could be more praiseworthy or more appealing 
than that the Jewish people in all parts of the world 
should desire to have a national home for such of them 
as wish to return to the country which was the cradle 
of their race, and where they lived and labored for 
several thousand years, a period running back to days 
just apparent in the dim dawn of recorded history? 
Why should the desire not be gratified? 

Surely the days of religious intolerance have gone by 
among all the most highly civilized nations of the world. 
Religious freedom is one of the cornerstones of the con- 
stitutional government of the United States. 


HENRY Caspot LopGcE. 


Of all the bigotries that savage the human temper 
there is none so stupid as the anti-Semitic. 


Davip LLoyp GEORGE. 


APPENDIX 259 


“LOYAL AND INTELLIGENT CITIZENSHIP” 


Realizing that “a new and dangerous spirit” is being in- 
troduced into our national political life, there issued an 
epochal address to America, in 1921, signed by more 
than a hundred notable “citizens of Gentile birth and 
Christian faith,” setting forth their condemnation as well 
as their patriotic anxieties over the campaign at that 
time beginning to assert energy in vindictiveness—“de- 
signed to foster distrust and suspicion of our fellow citi- 
zens of Jewish ancestry and faith—distrust and suspicion 
of their loyalty and their patriotism.” 

John Spargo, author, publicist, non-Jew, was the pro- 
ject’s initiator; and it was disclosed that “neither di- 
rectly nor indirectly did any person of Jewish ancestry 
or faith, or any Jewish organization have anything to do 
with its preparation or publication.” 

Outstanding names were on the roll—the foremost of 
the Nation—led by Woodrow Wilson, on the eve of re- 
tiring from the Presidency of the United States, former 
President Taft, William J. Bryan and Cardinal O’Con- 
nell, such a roster as induced a newspaper commentator 
to say: “Probably no similar document ever bore such a 
distinguished array of signatures.”* Herewith is the 
document’s full text and its signers: 

The undersigned, citizens of Gentile birth and Chris- 
tian faith, view with profound regret and disapproval the 
appearance in this country of what is apparently an or- 
ganized campaign of anti-Semitism, conducted in close 
conformity to and co-operation with similar campaigns 
in Europe. We regret exceedingly the publication of a 
number of books, pamphlets and newspaper articles de- 





*New York Times, January 17, 1921. 


260 APPENDIX 


signed to foster distrust and suspicion of our fellow- 
citizens of Jewish ancestry and faith—distrust and sus- 
picion of their loyalty and their patriotism. 

These publications, to which wide circulation is being 
given, are thus introducing into our national political 
life a new and dangerous spirit, one that is wholly at 
variance with our traditions and ideals and subversive 
of our system of government. American citizenship and 
American democracy are thus challenged and menaced. 
We protest against this organized campaign of prejudice 
and hatred, not only because of its manifest injustice to 
those against whom it is directed, but also, and especially, 
because we are convinced that it is wholly incompatible 
with loyal and intelligent American citizenship. The 
logical outcome of the success of such a campaign must 
necessarily be the division of our citizens along racial 
and religious lines, and, ultimately, the introduction of 
religious tests and qualifications to determine citizenship. 

The loyalty and patriotism of our fellow citizens of 
the Jewish faith is equal to that of any part of our 
people, and requires no defense at our hands. From the 
foundation of this Republic down to the World 
War, men and women of Jewish ancestry and faith have 
taken an honorable part in building up this great nation 
and maintaining its prestige and honor among the nations 
of the world. There is not the slightest justification, 
therefore, for a campaign of anti-Semitism in this 
country. 

Anti-Semitism is almost invariably associated with 
lawlessness and with brutality and injustice. It is also 
invariably found closely intertwined with other sinister 
forces, particularly those which are corrupt, reactionary 
and oppressive. 

We believe it should not be left to men and women of 
Jewish faith to fight this evil, but that it is in a very 
special sense the duty of citizens who are not Jews by 
ancestry or faith. We therefore make earnest protest 
against this vicious propaganda, and call upon our fellow 
citizens of Gentile birth and Christian faith to unite 


APPENDIX 261 


their efforts to ours, to the end that it may be crushed. 
In particular, we call upon all those who are molders of 
public opinion—the clergy and ministers of all Chris- 


tian churches, publicists, teachers, editors and_ states- 
men—to strike at this un-American and un-Christian 


agitation. 


Woodrow Wilson 
William Howard Taft 
William Cardinal O’Connell 
Lyman Abbott 

Jane Addams 

John G. Agar 

Newton D. Baker 

Ray Stannard Baker 
Charles A. Beard 

James M. Beck 
Bernard I. Bell 

Arthur E. Bestor 
Albert J. Beveridge 
Mabel T. Boardman 
Evangeline Booth 
Benjamin Brewster 
Chauncey B. Brewster 
Jeffrey R. Brackett 
Horace J. Bridges 
Henry Bruere 

William Jennings Bryan 
Nicholas Murray Butler 
Bainbridge Colby 

Alice B. Coleman 
George W. Coleman 
Paul D. Cravath 
George Creel 

Samuel McChord Crothers 
R. Fulton Cutting 

Olive Tilford Dargan 
Clarence Darrow 

James R. Day 

Henry S. Dennison 


W. E. B. Dubois 
James Duncan 
Robert Erskine Ely 
Charles P. Fagnani 
W. H. P. Faunce 
Dorothy Canfield Fisher 
Irving Fisher 

John Ford 

Raymond B. Fosdick 
Robert Frost 

H. A. Garfield 

James R. Garfield 
Lindley M. Garrison 
John Palmer Gavit 
Herbert Adams Gibbons 
Charles Dana Gibson 
Franklin H. Giddings 
Martin H. Glynn 
George Gray 

Edward Everett Hale 
James Hartness 
Patrick J. Hayes 
John Grier Hibben 
Jesse H. Holmes 
John Haynes Holmes 
Hamilton Holt 
Ernest Martin Hopkins 
Frederic C. Howe 
Henry C. Ide 

Inez Haynes Irwin 
Will Irwin 

George R. James 
David Starr Jordan 


262 APPENDIX 


William W. Keen 

Paul U. Kellogg 

William Sergeant Kendall 
George Kennan 

Henry Churchill King 
Darwin P. Kingsley 

W. P. Ladd 

Ira Landrith 

Franklin K. Lane 

Robert Lansing 

Julia C. Lathrop 

Ben B. Lindsley 

Charles H. Levermore 
Frederick Lynch 

Edwin Markham 

Mrs. Edwin Markham 
Daniel Gregory Mason 
Joseph Ernest McAfee 
J. F. McElwain 
Raymond McFarland 

E. T. Meredith 
Alexander R. Merriam 
James F. Minturn 

John Moody 

William Fellowes Morgan 
Charles Clayton Morrison 


Philip Stafford Moxom 
Joseph Fort Newton 

D. J. O'Connell 

Mary Boyle O’Reilly 
George Wharton Pepper 
Louis F. Post 

Theodore Roosevelt 
Charles Edward Russell 
Jacob Gould Schurman 
Vida D. Scudder 
Samuel Seabury 
Thomas J. Shahan 
Charles M. Sheldon 
Edwin E. Slosson 
Preston Slosson 

Robert E. Speer 
Charles Stelzle 

Paul Moore Strayer 
Marion Talbot 

Ida M. Tarbell 

Harry F. Ward 

Everett P. Wheeler 
Gaylord S. White 
George W. Wickersham 
Charles David Williams 
Charles Zueblin 


John Spargo 


APPENDIX 263 


THE JEw WHo EstapuisHep Cotumpus 


From the narrative of the son of Columbus, signing 
himself, Fernando Colombo, the great discoverers biog- 
rapher: 

At the court at Cordova the Admiral “made friends 
fitted to persuade the king.” Thus the son’s chronicle, 
which continues: “Among these was Luis de Santangel,* 
an Aragonian gentleman, clerk of the allowances in the 
king’s household, a man of great prudence and reputa- 
tion,” and through this connection a conclave of learned 
men, including eminent cosmographers made report upon 
the project. The result was not encouraging, for the 
wise men fell far apart, a majority certain that only 
Spain’s hemisphere contained land that was inhabited, 
that all the rest was sea. “In short,” records Fernando 
Colombo, “all of these men were governed by the Span- 
ish saying, ‘St. Augustine doubts it,’ and therefore it did 
not become the state and dignity of great sovereigns to 
be misled.” Chagrined, Columbus determined to apply to 
the king of France and was on his way when fate inter- 
fered, via the “Aragonian gentleman.” Here are the 
words of the son of Columbus: 

“It was in the month of January, in the year 1492, 
when the Admiral departed from the camp of Santa Fe. 
On that same day also Luis de Santangel, who did not 
approve of his going away, but was very desirous to 
prevent it, went to the queen, and using such words as 
his thoughts suggested to persuade and enlighten her, 
said he was surprised that her highness, who had always 
a great fondness for all matters of moment and conse- 
quence should now be timid in favoring this undertaking, 
where so little was hazarded, that might contribute in 
many ways to the glory of God. * * * The queen, know- 
ing the sincerity of Santangel’s words, answered, thank- 
ing him for his good advice and saying she was willing 
to accept the proposals upon the condition that the under- 
taking should be delayed until she had more leisure after 





*“Luis de Santangel . . . one of those antique Jews who have so 
greatly helped to enlighten the Christian world.”—Emilio Castelar’s Life 
of Columbus. 


264 APPENDIX 


the war, and yet, if he thought differently, she was satis- 
fied that as much money as was required to fit out a fleet, 
should be borrowed on her jewels. 

“But Santangel, perceiving that the queen had con- 
descended upon his advice to do what she had refused 
all other persons, replied that there was no need of pawn- 
ing her jewels, for he would do her highness that small 
service by lending his money. Thereupon the queen at 
once sent an officer post haste to bring the Admiral back, 
who found him upon the bridge of Pinos, two leagues 
from Granada. Although the Admiral was much dis- 
heartened by the disappointments and delays he had met 
with in his undertaking, nevertheless, being informed of 
the queen’s wish and intention, he returned to the camp 
of Santa Fe, where he was graciously entertained by their 
Catholic Majesties, and his commission and stipulations 
were intrusted to their secretary, Juan de Coloma, who, 
by the command of their highnesses, under their hand 
and seal, granted him all the conditions and previsions 
he had demanded, without altering or subtracting any- 
thing of them.” 


Se 


APPENDIX 265 


PIONEERS OF EDUCATION 


As recorded by Mr. McCall, Dr. Gershom Mendes 
Seixas, Patriot Minister of the Revolution, was one of 
its founders and first trustees when Columbia College, 
as a distinctively American institution, succeeded King’s 
College, which had a long time flourished under royal 
patronage. All told, there were no more than about 
twenty-five colleges in the country prior to the begin- 
ning of the Nineteenth Century, and of these nine or ten 
only antedated the Revolution. Most of them suspended 
during the war. Leon Hiner, the historian, devoting 
much research to the educational phases of that period 
in American history, brings interesting chapters to light. 
He finds, for example, that nearly all early educational 
enterprise had for object the training of the clergy, and 
was under strict religious discipline, therefore hardly 
appealing to Jews. 

“In fact,” chronicles Mr. Hiihner, “it is doubtful 
whether Jews would have been admitted to some of these 
institutions in those early days, even had they applied. 
It must be remembered that none of the colleges at this 
time had more than a mere handful of students at any 
time. The first class at Yale had but a single graduate 
and for years afterward her classes rarely exceeded four 
or five. Williams College, in intellectual Massachusetts, 
graduated a class of four as late as 1795. John Jay’s 
class at Columbia in 1764, ten years after the college 
was founded, consisted of but two. Even Harvard and 
Yale, prior to 1800, rarely graduated more than twenty- 
five in any one year. 

“As for the professions that might require a collegiate 
education, the legal profession was in most states closed to 
Jews until after the Revolution while two colleges only, 
Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania, main- 
tained medical schools prior to the Revolution. Harvard 
and Dartmouth were added prior to 1800 and the total 
number of medical graduates of these four institutions 
was less than a hundred for the entire period. 

“As late as 1818 Major Noah estimated the number of 
Jews in the United States at about 3,000. Prior to the 


266 APPENDIX | 


Nineteenth Century, and certainly during the Colonial 
period, about half of this population was centered in 
South Carolina and Georgia, in neither of which states 
was there then any college or professional school to speak 
of. The rest of the Jewish population was scattered 
throughout New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, 
each of which had but a single college—Columbia, the 
University of Pennsylvania and Brown. 

“The only ones of the early American colleges that 
have any Jewish associations at all are Harvard, Yale, 
Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, Franklin College 
in Pennsylvania and Columbia in New York. 

“The conclusion must not be drawn however,” points 
out Mr. Huhner, “that the Jews scattered through the 
colonies were men of little or no education. On the con- 
trary, most of them were fairly well educated and gen- 
erally better equipped, than their surrounding neighbors. 
Some, like Francis Salvador, had been educated abroad; 
the more prosperous settlers had their children educated 
by special tutors and in private schools. Occasionally 
young men were sent abroad to study; and wherever 
Jews lived in sufficient numbers to have a synagogue, 
there was generally a school of some kind connected with 
the congregation and its teachers were generally required 
to be competent to teach not only Hebrew, but English, 
Dutch and Spanish as well. 

“At Harvard not a single Jew was graduated from 
any of her schools during the entire period from 1637 to 
1800. From the start however the study of Hebrew was 
considered of the utmost importance and a Hebrew ora- 
tion was a regular feature at Harvard commencements 
from the beginning down to 1817. The only Jew con- 
nected with Harvard during the entire period was Judah 
Monis, an instructor of Hebrew for about forty years. 
Mr. Monis was an Italian Jew, born in 1683, who came 
to America at a very early age. He received the honor- 
ary degree of Master of Arts from Harvard College as 
early as 1720 and became an instructor there in 1722. 
He prepared a Hebrew grammar for Harvard, which was 
published in 1735, that being generally considered the 
first work of the kind in America. 


APPENDIX 267 


“Among Yale’s earliest graduates were several of the 
Isaacs family, all of Norwalk, Conn., who though not 
Jews themselves are constantly referred to as of Jewish 
origin. The most prominent Jewish graduates of Yale 
were the Pinto Brothers of New Haven, Abraham, Solo- 
mon and William, all of whom were ardent patriots and 
served as soldiers throughout the entire War of the Revo- 
lution. Solomon and William Pinto were both graduated 
in the class of 1777; Abraham did not graduate, possibly 
because he was wounded at the time New Haven was in- 
vaded by Tryon. Solomon Pinto retired from the ser- 
vice at the end of the war with the general disbandment 
of the army, and has the distinction of being one of the 
founders of the Society of the Cincinnati in Connecticut. 

“The only Jewish graduate of Columbia, prior to the 
Revolution was Isaac Abrahams, A. B., of the class of 
1774, and at graduation he delivered a Latin oration “On 
Concord’—the institution being still known as King’s 
College. It was ten years later—in 1784—that a board of 
regents was created by the State of New York, and Ger- 
shom Mendes Seixas, the Patriot Minister of the Span- 
ish and Portuguese Congregation of New York, made a 
member of that body. The name was changed to Colum- 
bia, and Mr. Seixas was also named and continued as 
trustee of the college down to 1815.” 


268 APPENDIX 


AMERICAN HISTORICAL RESEARCH 


“One of the literary features of New York especially 
impressive,” records an observer having exceptional op- 
portunities in the writing and publishing world, “is 
the devotion of Jewish scholars to historical study. It 
seems almost a part of their religion with some of them; 
they are continually at it, not only assiduously but in- 
tensively. At the Central Public Library of this city 
there is a Semitic Department. It is always a busy hive. 
Throughout every open hour its archives are under 
draft. The scholar in charge of it has his quality as 
specialist under constant test. Copious and comprehen- 
sive supplies are there of volumes related, it would 
seem, to every possible phase of Jewish literature and 
Hebraic history, classical authorities supplemented by 
current publications; but even this great mass of ma- 
terial falls short of research demands; and there is, I 
have learned, such an earnestness and enthusiasm in 
the quest for facts—for historic proofs—as overflows 
into competitive searching out of documentary, data. 
This development is in many of its aspects distinctly 
significant.” 

The same observer writes further: “Curiously, the in- 
spiration of this American historical research by Jewish 
students may be traceable to an example set by a non- 
Jew—Judge Joseph P. Daly whose work, ‘The Settle- 
ment of the Jews in North America,’ originally pre- 
pared as a paper presented merely for its local history 
bearings, has become actually foundational (developed 
under the editorship of Max J. Kohler) of a distinctive 
American Jewish history movement. Mr. Kohler has 
eminence in scholarship won otherwise than in the elabo- 
ration and elucidation of Judge Daly’s study; but this 
one contribution has far-reaching influence. 

“Another devotee to this delving into American history, 
and thereby bringing into authentication the patriotic 
part of the Jew in the making and the maintaining of 
our Nation, is Leon Htihner, lawyer colleague of Mr. 
Kohler and curator of the American Jewish Historical 


APPENDIX 269 


Society. His researches have been broad, and they have 
been fruitful. 

“Particularly notable in the development is a spirit 
that animates the work. It might be presupposed that 
the task the Jewish history student would set him- 
self would be to find what was always favorable to him- 
self, to his race and religion. That would be merest 
human nature. But the fact is different. It is the boast 
of one community, for example, that among all its Jew- 
ish inhabitants—some hundreds—during the War of the 
Revolution, not one was a Tory; but an investigating 
Jewish scholar by months of persistent application to 
scattered Eighteenth Century documents discovers this 
to be too high a claim, puts the disproval on record, and 
is thanked by conferees for service. Such highminded- 
ness will be found the rule.” 

George Alexander Kohut ranks among the foremost 
of Jewish American historians, one of his contributions 
being a critical study of colonial American Jewry, en- 
titled “Ezra Stiles and the Jews,” originally published 
in the scholarly “American Hebrew’; in elaborated book 
form it is one of our most worthwhile history compends. 
A feature distinctive in the works of Kohler, Hthner, 
Kohut, and others of their quality, is the specific way 
in which authorities are registered—for every statement, 
sponsorship, attestation of painstaking labor, accuracy 
a matter of conscience. 

To catalogue even those who lead among working 
historians is not here feasible—the list long and merit 
widely distributed. Isaac Leeser and Isaac M. Wise 
were pioneers. F. DeSola Mendes, Louis Ginzberg, 
Richard Gottheil, S. Solis Cohen, Israel Friedlander, Hy- 
man G. Enelow, Max L. Margolis, Israel Abrahams, Al- 
bert M. Friedenberg, Harry Schneiderman, Henrietta 
Szold, Kaufman Kohler, Cyrus Adler—such are a rep- 
resentative few of those eminently notable. 

Enthusiastic authorship has the support of an efficient 
publication organization, directed by energies like those 
of Simon Miller, Abram I. Elkus, Murray Seasongood, 
Seligman Strauss, A. Leo Weil, Julius Rosenwald, 
Louis Marshall and Julian W. Mack. 


270 APPENDIX 


A monumental work, attesting the character and cali- 
ber of American Jewish scholarship is the Jewish En- 
cyclopedia, its many volumes approximating 9,000 pages 
with signed articles from over 600 contributors, including 
virtually every name nationally authoritative in Jewish 
theology, literature and historical research. So great 
was the expenditure in perfecting a work so comprehen- 
sive that at one time it was apprehended that the publish- 
ers might be obliged to contract its scope, whereupon a 
group of earnest men, in personal devotion to the proj- 
ect’s high aim, underwrote all its requirements—in that 
list being Supreme Court Justice Nathan Bijur, Charles 
S. Henry, Philip S$. Henry, L. N. Hershfield, Adolph 
Lewisohn, Leonard Lewisohn, Louis Marshall, M. War- 
ley Platzek, Jacob H. Schiff, James Speyer, Leopold 
Stern, Louis Stern, Isador Straus, C. L. Sulzberger, 
Mayer Sulzberger, and Felix M. Warburg. 

In periodical literature, and journalistically, the Jew- 
ish people are well served. Publications of the type of 
the Jewish Tribune and the American Hebrew, wherein 
historical review and discussion have broad scope, are 
supplemented by a news press that is progressive. 


APPENDIX 271 


AMERICANIZATION’s Forwarp Marcy 


Were it possible that the crusading Leo N. Levi could 
come now to survey what in his day were the deplorable 
Ghetto conditions of lower East Side New York, marked 
changes—wholesome revolution—would confront, sur- 
prise and cheer him. Outstanding features depressing him 
two decades ago have largely passed; what he hoped 
for, called for, develops. “No man,” he lamented, could 
“form the remotest idea of the conditions prevailing” 
unless he made personal inspection.* Betterment’s cam- 
paign has proceeded “tediously and painfully slow,” as 
he accentuated necessity would require; but systematic 
campaigning has been effective. ‘There is,” as Joseph 
Levenson epitomizes it—himself a leader potent in this 
campaigning—“there is a new East Side.” It is in com- 
prehension of this manifest progress that Mr. McCall 
(page 224) writes: “The effort that the American Jews 
have made to transform Jewish immigrants and put 
them in the way of becoming good American citizens 
is wholly admirable, and is unsurpassed by any work 
done in Americanization.” 

There was a time and a fashion that made New York’s 
East Side typical of ignorance and of crime. It suited 
an industriously inventive school in journalistic literature 
to build its high lights on the distresses and delinquencies 
of the Bowery and its environs—the Jewish figure made 
conspicuous in offensive exaggerations. But the vogue 
has disappeared. Go to the Metropolitan Board of Edu- 
cation today with the inquiry: Where is a distinctive 
educational center; and the official answer will direct you 
to where Leo N. Levi’s “stupendous problem” used to be. 

In the legion of local fraternal organizations active in 
New York, one vibrant with enthusiasm is incorporated 
as “The Grand Street Boys,” devoted “To Good Fellow- 
ship and Good Deeds.” It is the very mirror of Mr. 
Levenson’s “New East Side.” In a recent celebration 
more than three thousand members joined—and in large 
proportion the membership is Jewish. Judge Max S. 





*Chapter XVII—“Foreign Desolation’s Urgent Appeal.” 


ade APPENDIX 


Levine is its president and Judge Otto A. Rosalsky 
chairman of its directors. Within its local precincts 
have risen hosts who today are prominent in the world’s 
activities. Former Governor Alfred E. Smith was an 
East Side boy, there George B. Cortelyou had his busi- 
ness apprenticeship; both of the city’s present political 
leaders, Samuel Koenig, Republican, and Charles F. 
Murphy, Tammany, are of the coterie, as likewise Jus- 
tices Neuberger, Mulqueen and Giegerich of the Su- 
preme Court. Jacob Epstein, the sculptor, and Mme. 
Gluck, the prima donna, are on the East Side list. Every 
day has been a day of forward-march from the Leo N. 
Levi outlook of years ago when “no man could form 
the remotest idea of the conditions prevailing’—every 
day the forward-march of Americanism. ‘The present 
example of men and women who lived their early days 
in the environment of the East Side,” comments a local 
historian, “can proudly be held up to coming generations 
as an indication of the possibilities of our blessed land. 
How many who ridicule and condemn, are aware that 
within the East Side’s territory there is a population of 
five hundred thousand souls? What population of half 
a million, anywhere in the world, is immune from some 
wrong doing and want and misery? An investigation of 
statistics shows that the percentage of crime is less in 
this part of the metropolis than in any other community 
of similar numbers. The facts are that these half million 
residents worthily perform their daily tasks, striving to 
make their way in the world, contributing their share 
to the general success of the community—and how little 
said in their praise! Sinners among them are pictured 
and featured in the public eye as sinners of no other 
neighborhood on earth are painted, but yet the truth 
that is obvious, and the truth that persists against all 
cynicism, is that by nobody and nowhere is excelled 
this community’s loyalty to idealism, concentration upon 
education, devotion to home and to country.” 


APPENDIX 275 


A BENEFACTION A CARDINAL WELCOMED 


Reference is made in Chapter XVI to the distinctive 
generosity of Dr. Max Pam, the corporation lawyer, 
whose gift—founding scholarships in the Catholic Uni- 
versity at Washington for study of the Social Sciences— 
is cited by Governor McCall as evidencing that “the 
beneficence of the Jew is not limited to his own race.” So 
striking is this example that there is warrant for present- 
ing here the letter with which the donation was ac- 
companied: 


New York, June 1, 1912. 
Your EMINENCE: 


It gives me pleasure to hand you herewith check cover- 
ing the first of five scholarships, each being in the sum 
of Five Thousand Dollars, established by arrangement 
with Your Eminence in the Catholic University of 
America, for the purposes hereinafter indicated. 

The reasons and motives impelling me to found these 
scholarships are as follows: 


The spirit of “live and let live” has been the dominant 
characteristic of our people up to the present time. From 
a material standpoint we have been very fortunate. A 
land of boundless resources and manifold opportunities, 
the struggle for existence has been deprived of the hard 
features which characterize it in most other countries. 
But conditions are rapidly changing. A phenomenal in- 
crease in population is straining our resources more and 
more each year, and opportunities are proportionately 
decreased. As a result of these changed conditions the 
spirit of ‘live and let live’ must sooner or later yield to 
that individual selfishness begotten of a more intense 
struggle for existence unless another and higher spirit, 
the spirit of live and help live, comes to its aid. We are 
not and should not be, in any state, individual units, 
seeking our own selfish ends, and concerned only with 
what affects our own personal welfare. 

Live and help live should be the true patriot’s motto. 
Rich and poor have fought side by side to save this 
country and to give it freedom. They have worked to- 


274 APPENDIX 


gether to upbuild it. The rich of today are the poor of 
yesterday. There is no dividing line of blood between 
them and none of the artificial distinctions of caste and 
class which are to be found in older civilizations. And 
I do believe there is less class hatred in America today 
than in any country under the sun. Our men of wealth, 
as a class, have shown themselves to be unselfish and 
patriotic, and American philanthrophy is a world’s won- 
der at the present moment. 

Every European country today is face to face with 
grave economic problems. Our turn is coming; in fact, 
it is a grave question if it be not already here. We hear 
advanced, from time to time, new and strange theories 
of government. There are some who claim even at the 
present hour, that the Constitution has outlived its use- 
fulness. In spite of assertions to the contrary, I am 
strongly convinced that the spirit of our people is sane, 
conservative and just. There is plenty of respect for 
law and order, consideration for the rights of others and 
a general realization that the millennium promised by 
political visionaries will not arrive in a week or a year. 
The people at bottom are right, but they need wise and 
honest leadership. 

To avert this latter danger we must have men who 
are qualified by training and integrity to meet and op- 
pose it whenever and wherever it appears. It is my con- 
viction that it is the people themselves who must supply 
this leadership. In my humble way I want to help 
talented young men to fit and qualify themselves for this 
work and therefore it is with great pleasure that I am, 
with your consent, establishing these five scholarships 
with the understanding that the young men who will be 
chosen for these scholarships will make a special study 
of social and economic problems. These problems, as I 
conceive it, will center round man’s relation to man, 
man’s relation to government, and man’s relation to 
property. 

The Catholic Church holds to the traditions of the past ; 
it is conservative; it stands for authority, for govern- 
ment, for the rights of the individual and for the rights 
of property, and these to my mind are the chief elements 


APPENDIX 275 


that enter into individual and national happiness; it has 
the largest number of communicants of any religious 
institution in the country; it has the opportunity of 
moulding character, developing the intelligence and 
creating a proper sense of the duties and responsibilities 
of citizenship, not only amongst those who are citizens 
at the present moment, but amongst the millions who 
will come from other lands, seeking better opportunities 
and more favorable conditions of life. 

I do not believe in helpfulness which leads to lack of 
self-reliance, destroys individual ambition and makes 
drones instead of producers. I believe that all right- 
thinking people are as opposed to predatory poverty as 
they are to predatory wealth. I believe in religious edu- 
cation which quickens the conscience to a sense of its 
responsibilities. I believe in the country’s future and 
have faith that the people properly educated and wisely 
led will solve their problems as they arise; and with the 
spirit of religion finding permanent place in thought and 
conduct, both in private and public life, the liberties and 
happiness of the people are secure. 

In conclusion, Your Eminence, permit me to express 
the hope that the young men who will receive a higher 
education as a result of this foundation will reflect credit 
upon their Alma Mater and will, under your care, de- 
velop that type of character which makes for all that is 
best in the Nation’s life. 


Faithfully yours, 
Max Pam. 


To His EMINENCE, 
JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS. 


276 APPENDIX 


THE TESTED CAPACITY OF GREAT HEARTEDNESS 


American Jewry at the beginning of 1917 was gravely 
agitated. Chronicled horrors from the East grew ghastlier 
and ghastlier. Such philanthropy was determined upon as 
never before had comparable magnitude. Jacob Billikopf, a 
young man with notable civic achievements to his credit, 
had been called from Kansas City to be the fund raising 
director; and the elders of the Jewish Committee had 
approved his plan of campaign which included the 
thought that great good would be wrought if some one 
eminent representative of the people should lead off with 
a contribution so splendid in its size as to be impres- 
sively challenging to sympathizers everywhere. 

Spontaneously, all minds went directly to the name of 
Julius Rosenwald—rich, not in money merely, rich in 
philanthropies that throughout his life had flown unin- 
terruptedly. “See Mr. Rosenwald,” was prescribed for 
Mr. Billikopf. There were optimists who thought that 
perhaps Mr. Rosenwald might lead with the gift of as 
much as a hundred thousand dollars. He was capable 
of even that. 

And here is the sequel as graphically told by Mr. 
Billikopf himself in a volume issued by the publishing 
house of Alfred A. Knopf, under the title of, “The Jew 
Pays,” by M. E. Ravage: 

“It was the night of the 3rd of March, 1917. On the 
morrow President Wilson was to be reinaugurated. If 
only my quarry had been in his customary haunts, so 
that the familiar scene might restore my ease and com- 
posure. But he, too, was at the seat of Government. 
It would be a crowded day for him. I had grave ques- 
tionings in my heart as to whether I could even catch a 
glimpse of him. Affairs in New York were so situated 
that I must return by the midnight train on the day fol- 
lowing. Mr. Rosenwald was not only one of the busiest 
members of the Council of National Defense, he was 
personally close to the President, and to-morrow was a 
great day in official Washington. 

“But the fate of six millions of people in the sham- 
bles of the Eastern war-zone depended on the success of 


APPENDIX 277 


my mission. My first campaign was doomed in advance 
unless I brought back what I had been sent for. There 
was no other way. Mr. Rosenwald was the reliance of 
the Committee. If I allowed my discouragement to af- 
fect me and he failed us, our plans might be headed for 
the rocks. 

“I had my task cut out for me in pacing the lobbies 
of Mr. Rosenwald’s hotel. It grew late at night and 
I dared not leave my post lest he should appear while I 
was gone and retire to his suite before I returned. And 
in the meantime the hour for the last train to New York 
was drawing nearer and nearer, and far from having 
achieved the object of my expedition I had not as much 
as met the enemy. 

“At 11 o’clock, however, Mr. Rosenwald appeared in 
the company of two Senators, and he proceeded to intro- 
duce me and to tell them my life history. But all the 
while I was rehearsing anew what I was about to say 
to the man I had been shadowing an entire day, assum- 
ing that I could get him alone before train time. I 
squeezed Mr. Rosenwald’s arm significantly and 
whispered in his ear that I had something of importance 
to convey to him. “Is it very, very important?’ he asked 
lightly, and before I could give him my emphatic reply 
he bade our friends good-night and drew me off to a 
sofa in a corner of the lobby. 

“Well, tell me all about it,’ he said as soon as we 
sat down. I glanced up at him and my entire harangue, 
on which I had spent so much arduous toil and thought, 
evaporated; and I heard myself, to my own great sur- 
prise, telling him in the very simplest and most un- 
adorned style that a campaign for ten million dollars 
was about to be launched, that it needed some powerful 
dramatic stimulus to start it off effectively and to end it 
successfully; that the Committee had determined that 
nothing but a great single gift would serve—and that 
he, transcendently, was the man to make that gift. 

“T dwelt hardly at all on the state of things abroad, 
merely indicating in a matter of fact way what he was 
well aware of, that the condition of the European Jews 
was growing increasingly worse and that a renewed ef- 


278 ; APPENDIX 


fort on a much greater scale than had ever been tried 
must be initiated. He listened without comment while 
my appeal was gathering momentum and climbing from 
argument to argument to its climax. 

“T had had hundreds of conversations with Mr. Rosen- 
wald but I had never before asked him for contributions 
of any sort; and never before had I seen a face so trans- 
parent and serene and yet so profoundly thoughtful. I 
kept praying, as I talked along, that he might not break 
in. We seemed both under the spell of a common great 
purpose, and I knew that as long as the spell was not 
broken the future of the undertaking was assured. As 
I concluded with my specific request—request for a 
round million—the earnestness of his expression deep- 
ened. He said merely: 

“Do you think it will do any good?’ 

“IT nodded and was about to proceed with a highly 
colored forecast of the results of such a contribution, 
when he rose. 

“Very well, I will do it,’ he said, with a gentle kind- 
liness. ‘You may go back to New York and tell them 
that I'll do it.’” 


This telegram was sequel: 
The White House, Washington. 


To Julius Rosenwald, Chicago. 

Your contribution of one million dollars to the Ten 
Million Dollar fund for the Relief of Jewish War Suf- 
ferers serves democracy as well as humanity. 

The Russian Revolution has opened the door of free- 
dom to an oppressed people; but unless they are given 
life and strength and courage, the opportunity of cen- 
turies will avail them little. It is to America that these 
starving millions look for aid; and out of our pros- 
perity, fruit of free institutions, should spring a vast 
and ennobling generosity. Your gift lays an obligation 
even while it furnishes inspiration. 

Wooprow WILSON. 


APPENDIX 279 


“THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AS A WHOLE” 
By M. E. Ravace* 


From its very inception, the movement (during the 
World-War) for saving the Jewish people in the war- 
torn countries from annihilation assumed something 
vastly broader than a racial or sectarian character. It 
will be remembered that President Wilson gave the 
movement his blessing and support before it had scarcely 
begun. 

The American people, as a whole, seem to have real- 
ized from the first that when men and women and 
children are hungry and suffering, their origin and their 
faith and their local habitation are the least important 
things about them. : 

Whether it was a too sensitive Jewish pride or a fidel- 
ity to its record for independence in benevolence, there 
was for a long time a reluctance on the part of the lead- 
ers to accept contributions from non-Jews. But despite 
the proud reticence of the American Jew himself, the 
generous non-Jew simply insisted that he should not be 
excluded from participation. 

At the North and at the South, on the Atlantic sea- 
board, in the middle-West and on the Pacific, men and 
women who were faithful to the humane American tra- 
dition, or who had not forgotten their Bible, or who had 
had dealings with Jews in their own villages, came for- 
ward enthusiastically to do their part in every campaign, 
egged on by a sense that a people, which in spite of 
twenty centuries of persecution could still retain enough 
of their vigor to be continually making contributions to 
the world’s civilization and be worthy citizens every- 
where, should not be allowed to perish in the shambles 
of a world gone mad. 

Judge E. B. Muse of Dallas has expressed, I venture 
to hope, the attitude of high-minded non-Jews in this 
matter in words which coming from a Jew would have 
been ungracious, but are all the nobler for their source: 

“All we have to do is to stop and think—think, what 


*Author of “The Jew Pays,” Alfred A. Knopf, Publisher. 


280 APPENDIX 


the Jew has done for the world—think what a debt the 
world owes the Jew, to make honest, conscientious men 
step forth and do their best now in behalf of the Jew. 
The Jew first pointed man to the worship of the only 
true and living God, a personal God, a God of love, law, 
justice and mercy. The Bible, the Ten Commandments, 
the Sermon on the Mount—the foundation of all law in 
all civilized lands comes to us from the Jew. 

“They have contributed of their blood and treasure 
unstintedly to every good cause for freedom and hu- 
manity’s sake—from Bunker Hill to Yorktown and from 
Yorktown all the way to this good hour. No purer patriots 
ever lived, no more loyal friends had any man or country 
than the Jews, who for country and friendship’s sake 
financed Washington in the dark days of the American 
Revolution. The history of the world tells the story of 
their undimmed devotion and undying love for freedom.” 

Both for genuineness of sentiment and simplicity of 
language, I have no hesitancy in reproducing the letter 
which follows, as one of the purest documents in the 
annals of man’s love for his kind: 


J. S. MURROW 


MISSIONARY AMONG INDIANS 60 YEARS—82 YEARS OLD 
UNDER GOD'S DIRECTION FOUNDER OF 
MURROW INDIAN ORPHANS HOME 


Atoka, Oklahoma, April 2oth. 


Mr. Herbert H. Lehman, 

Treasurer, &c. 

I am not a Jew.—I am an old worn out Christian— 
Indian Missionary—a Baptist. 

Your God is my God. Your Father—my Father. 
Your people are my Master’s people. Your brethren 
are my brethren. My means are small—but my heart 
greatly rejoices because of this privilege of sending the 
enclosed one hundred dollars for the relief of the suffer- 
ing and starving Jews in Europe. 

Sincerely, 
J. S. Murrow, 





APPENDIX 281 


THE CAMPAIGN WITHOUT PRECEDENT 


That marvel of mid-wartime—under the leadership of 
Jacob Billikopf, ten millions of dollars contributed by 
America to succor sufferers in Europe’s ravaged zones— 
has still more recently a sequel magnificent. The end- 
ing of war did not end the agonies of people scourged 
infinitely—did not end the duty that America’s quick- 
ened heart was witness of. Piteous pleas for help came 
from 300,000 war and pogrom orphans and 400,000 
refugees who, if unsuccored, were doomed. 

Apparently insuperable obstacles confronted, due to 
economic and industrial depression, and to the wide- 
spread public feeling that philanthropic appeal had al- 
ready been carried to extremes. But—for the sake of 
the war-stricken Jews of Europe and Palestine—the 
leaders of American Jewry conferred and considered 
and determined. There was need, there must be relief. 
The result was victory marvelous. Of every part of the 
country, of every state in the Union, of every Jewish 
and many non-Jewish communities, the same splendid 
and thrilling story is told. It is a record based upon 
thoughtful insistence in resolute campaigns, ending in 
over-subscription—success everywhere, failure nowhere. 

The “National Appeal” was for $14,000,000. The 
response was beyond $18,000,000. In enthusiasm a 
“Victory Conference,” presided over by Major General 
Abel Davis, celebrated the achievement—‘“one of the 
finest chapters in the history of the Jewish people,” it 
has been denominated. David A. Brown, prominent citi- 
zen of Detroit, was the campaign’s leader and the Victory 
Conference, held in Detroit on April 9, 1922, was largely 
a testimonial to the wonders that his capacity and devo- 
tion wrought. Delegates gathered from every part of 
the United States, and in their jubilation all hailed the 
apostrophe of their spokesman, Julius Rosenwald, who 
acclaimed David Brown the accomplisher unparalleled. 

Colonel Herbert H. Lehman, of New York, reviewing 
the work accomplished, advised the conference of plans 
contemplated by the Joint Distribution Committee to 
help the horrible situation abroad. “We must bear in 


282 APPENDIX 


mind,” he urged, “that we still have a great obligation, 
not merely for today or tomorrow, but that we must be 
in a position to help so far as possible in saving the 
masses of people on the other side who, without our help, 
will be entirely forlorn and helpless. In Russia the con- 
dition is appalling. There probably has never been a 
time in the history of man where so many people were 
suffering the pangs of hunger, in danger of their lives 
from disease and pogroms, and who were so completely 
hopeless, as they are in Russia. 

“We do not deal in Russia with thousands or tens of 
thousands of people, but with millions, and there we must 
continue for a considerable time our actual palliative re- 
lief on a large scale, or else these people will die. It is 
not a question of the little things which I have heard of, 
a little hunger, a little cold, a little suffering, a little 
misery, such as all of us have seen within our own com- 
munities, but of actual life and death, and sometimes life 
that is worse than death.” 

An address by Louis Marshall, “the statesman of 
American Jewry,” was a distinguishing feature of the 
Victory Conference. ‘‘When shortly after the start of 
the war, in 1914, the American Jewish Relief Committee 
was formed,” said Mr. Marshall, “to answer the cry of 
distress that had come from the Jews of Europe, no one 
realized the magnitude of the cataclysm that had oc- 
curred. No one had any idea how long the work of re- 
lief would have to be carried on. Neither was there 
any conception of the amount of money the Jews of 
America would be called upon to raise for their suffer- 
ing brethren abroad. However, in the colossal task of 
raising upward of $60,000,000, the Central Jewish Re- 
lief Committee and the People’s Relief Committee have 
given their utmost co-operation. 

“T feel that never since the world began has there been 
such an exhibition of nobility of character, of whole- 
hearted philanthropy, of—what is more—of the spirit 
of love and brotherhood, as the Jews of America have 
evinced during these last seven terrible years. I pray 
to God from the bottom of my heart that the time will 
soon be here when it will not be necessary for us to con- 


APPENDIX 283 


duct campaigns for the relief of our brethren abroad; 
that it may be given us to see that under proper political 
protection, which is afforded in the constitutions of the 
newly constituted governments of Eastern Europe, the 
Jew will have the opportunity of developing himself in 
his country; that the Jews will be enabled, through our 
assistance, to become rehabilitated and reconstructed, so 
that we may turn our eyes upon the problems that con- 
front us here in the United States, that we may be en- 
abled before long to engage in campaigns for the collec- 
tion of funds necessary to grapple with the most mo- 
mentous problem that has ever confronted American 
Jewry. That is the problem of Jewish education.” 


As was the mid-war experience, the campaign of 
1921-22-23 was marked by the whole-hearted co-operation 
of non-Jews. By way of illustration, take the record pre- 
sented by Mr. Lionel Weil, State Chairman of North 
Carolina. “Irrespective of race or creed,” he told the 
Victory Conference, “our entire citizenship rallied to 
this call of human suffering and gave of themselves to 
relieve our stricken brethren. “The whole State was 
aflame with this spirit for Jewish relief. Mayors is- 
sued proclamations. Churches and Sunday-schools took 
up collections. A great number of prominent ministers 
of different denominations accepted chairmanships in 
leading communities. The children of the State Masonic 
Orphanage actually gave of their small savings over 
$200, in order that our orphan children in distant lands 
should not perish.” 

In personnel nothing surpassing was ever organized 
for such high-hearted work—leaders from every part of 
the Union and from every phase of activity sustaining 
the earnestness and effectiveness of the campaign. As 
National Director of the American Jewish Relief Com- 
mittee Henry H. Rosenfelt welcomed David A. Brown 
as National Chairman of this appeal for Jewish war 
sufferers—Mr. Rosenfelt’s laurels won when, in complete 
charge of the campaign of 1920-21, more money was 


284 APPENDIX 


raised under his direction than ever thitherto had been 
so obtained. Mr. Brown’s selection was caused through 
spontaneous appreciation of his outstanding personal 
record of achievement. He was on his way to a Euro- 
pean vacation when the call of his people interposed— 
and without a murmur he changed all the plans of pleas- 
ure he had arranged, and buckled on the armor for such 
labors as seldom are allotted to any man. 

Supporting Mr. Brown closely and continuously was 
a dynamic National Advisory Council, composed of 
James H. Becker, Jacob Billikopf, Jules E. Mastbaum, 
Paul L. Feiss, Colonel Fred Levy, Charles Rubens, 
Albert M. Rosenthal, Henry H. Rosenfelt, Samuel C. 
Lamport, Louis E. Kirstein, Felix M. Warburg, and 
Irvin F. Lehman. And supplementing these there were 
masters in efficiency denominated Zone Chairman: 
Charles Rubens, of Chicago; Cyrus Adler, Philadelphia; 
Nathaniel Spear, Pittsburgh; Victor M. Kriegshaber, 
Atlanta; Louis E. Kirstein, Boston; David H. March, 
New Orleans; Nathan Frank, St. Louis; Moses A. 
Gunst, San Francisco, and Adolph Lewisohn, New York 
City—having oversight in groups of states. 

Every state had in addition its individual citizen chair- 
man: Isadore Weil, of Alabama; Charles T. Abeles, 
Arkansas; Moses A. Gunst, Northern California; 
Adolph Fleishmann, Southern California; Milton M. 
Schayer, Colorado; Charles H. Shapiro, Connecticut; 
David Snellenberg, Delaware; Simon Lyon, District of 
Columbia; David Falk, Florida; Armand May, Georgia; 
Gov. Moses Alexander, Idaho; Jacob M. Loeb, Chicago; 
Julius N. Myers, Illinois (except Chicago) ; L. J. Borin- 
stein, Indiana; Jacob L. Sheuerman, Iowa; B. B. Woolfe, 
Kansas; Col. Fred Levy, Kentucky; Rabbi Emil W. 
Leipziger, Louisiana; Jacob H. Berman, Maine; Eli 
Frank, Maryland; Louis E. Kirstein, Massachusetts; 
Fred M. Butzel, Michigan; Joseph H. Schanfeld, Minne- 
sota; Joseph Hirsh, Mississippi; Nathan Frank, Mis- 
souri; Abe Wehl, Montana; William Holzman, Ne- 
braska; Abraham Machinist, New Hampshire; Felix 
Fuld, New Jersey; Ivan Grunsfeld, New Mexico; 
Eugene Warner, New York (except New York City) ; 


APPENDIX 285 


David M. Bressler, New York City; Lionel Weil, North 
Carolina; D. Naftalin, North Dakota; Alfred M. Cohen, 
Ohio; Emile Offenbacher, Oklahoma; Jules E. Mast- 
baum, Eastern Pennsylvania; Nathaniel Spear, Western 
Pennsylvania; Archibald Silverman, Rhode Island; 
Louis Shimel, South Carolina; Joe Livingston, South 
Dakota; Joseph Newburger, Tennessee; J. K. Hexter, 
Texas; Gov. Simon Bamburger, Utah; Moe Levy, Vir- 
ginia; Louis H. Burnett, Washington; H. O. Baer, West 
Virginia; A. L. Salzstein, Wisconsin; Jacob Sherman, 
Wyoming. 


David M. Bressler, chairman of the City of New York 
achieved the marvelous. “The quota originally set for 
the metropolis,” epitomized Colonel H. A. Guinzburg, 
presiding at a celebration in honor of Mr. Bressler, 
“was four million dollars. Many who had been identi- 
fied with philanthropic effort thought that if two and a 
half millions could be raised the campaign would be a 
great success. The record is over five millions—at- 
tributable, have acclaimed those closely familiar with the 
work, to the organizing ability and inspirational influ- 
ence of Mr. Bressler.” There were 92,000 contributors, 
not including the very large number of workingmen, 
workingwomen, municipal and federal employees and 
school children who joined in bulk contribution. Nor 
does the total of 92,000 include that other mass of anony- 
mous lovers of humanity who responded to the appeals 
made in theatres and other public gathering places. In 
previous campaigns the total list of subscribers had not 
surpassed 26,000. 

David M. Bressler joined every cooperator the whole 
land over in acclaiming the hearts of the people, em- 
phasizing the tribute of David A. Brown: “They made 
this victory possible! The only way we can get joy, 
the only way to get what is worth while,” said David A. 
Brown, “is by giving. You cannot get it by getting.” 


286 APPENDIX 


The total of $18,000,000 and over raised in this “un- 
precedented campaign,’ as Mr. Louis Marshall has 
called it, was contributed as follows: 


Alabatiiaw 21th scene $100,000 \ aiNebraska x. Go's eas $150,000 
Arizonxeeiceeeasek sy 25,000 ve Nevadaltisecane sones 2,500 
Arkansasicwncsns.. 100,000 New Hampshire ... 25,000 
Colitornida sev eca ey 750,000 New Jersey ....... 825,000 
Colorado iyercens. ¢ 150,000 New Mexico....... 10,000 
Connecticut ....... 362, 000) WEIN C Waly Oblduisn eecaeite 5,142,000 
Delawarenn is esk? 100,000 North Carolina .... 147,000 
District of Columbia 110,000 North Dakota ..... 50,000 
Florida ype ens. 35:000% LONG a Gee Gee ea cteule 1,000,000 
(Store ia wie onan set 200,000 33 Oklahomay tatoos. 60,000 
Loans Wann ite nics 10,000 vi) Oresotiaiy, vasireent 75,000 
TN O1S Gettin ikea ee 2,087,000 Pennsylvania ...... 1,750,000 
Indiana’ (aoarens ost 330,000 Rhode Island ...... 110,000 
LOMA Mich one arse 106,000 South Carolina .... 80,000 
ISANSA SM een bw ec alite 65.000; South? Dakotan. 24. 50,000 
Kentticky wn or eles 150,000... Tennessee <)...-.0% 125,000 
EAvUIStatia tes, wilh 28 4 200,000 sim LOxaS ING haha veers 250,000 
Maine aplasia dee BO. OOO melita ee rrr AL ie tees ae 25,000 
Maryland poe ies cual. 522409 ws Vermont ia vee wacmere 25,000 
Massachusetts ..... SOR COG G Virginia kcseee oe 155,000 
Michivatramcs Wiese 300,000 Washington ........ 100,000 
Minnesota ......... 354,000 West Virginia ..... 70,000 
Mississippi ........ 50,000 “Wisconsin .......... 200,000 
Missouri is ccihes Ce vin' 500,000 Wyoming ......... 5,000 
Montanay 4. eaurs 10,0007 4 Ganadaye reise an 250,000 


Notable contribution of thought and labor came from 
the most distinguished sources, business routine set aside, 
private interests subordinated, that full strength should 
be given to what became a very sacrament of human 
duty. Illustrations outstanding—representative of a na- 
tion’s nobly widespread spirit—loomed in the example of 
Felix M. Warburg, eminent banker who, engrossed in 
vast international finance responsibilities, relegated every 
personal relation to secondary consideration to make 


APPENDIX 287 


benevolence premier. He assumed—at what sacrifice of 
comfort and of fortune no man may estimate—the pyra- 
midic burdens of financially administering American 
Jewry’s crusading beneficence. Marvels he wrought. 
“From 1914,” epitomizes a historian of the epochal task 
and achievement “the words Joint Distribution Com- 
mittee and Felix M. Warburg were practically inter- 
changeable” ; and the same chronicler adds :* 

“It is the sense of noblesse oblige that makes Mr. 
Warburg take such an intense interest in things that 
are for the Jewish good and that makes him assume the 
terrifying responsibilties that have gone with the ad- 
ministering of the $65,000,000 raised in this country to 
help the war-stricken Jews of Europe and which made 
him such an active force in the post-war campaign to 
raise $5,000,000 in New York City toward the $14,000,- 
000 appeal. 

“His interest in Jewish affairs is an evolution. When 
he came to this country one of his first Jewish interests 
was the Educational Alliance, down on East Broadway. 
Here the bitter struggle of hundreds of Jewish young 
men toward the finer things of life was revealed to him. 

“At the Educational Alliance he met Julia Richman 
whose struggle for public school reform won his sup- 
port and led him into the Board of Education; and on 
the East Side he saw Lillian D. Wald at work in a 
dingy tenement, and because he believed in her work 
the Henry Street Settlement and its manifold activities 
received his co-operation in exchange for the inspiration 
he got from them. 

“The whole drab vista of the life of the poor spread 
before him in this way. And so he became interested 
in the idea of setting up classes in public schools for de- 
ficient children under Miss Farrel; and in probation 
under Gov. Hughes; in the Association for the Help of 
the Blind; and in Teacher’s College and in Harvard 
University. 

“It is not so long ago that Mr. Warburg thought 
the time was fast approaching when he could turn his 





*A. H. Fromenson, in The American Hebrew, 1922. 


288 APPENDIX 


thoughts to the things, to the pleasures that he has had 
to abandon. The period of palliative relief was drawing 
to a close, and the J. D. C. was planning liquidation. 
But when James H. Becker and then Dr. Bogen and Dr. 
Rosenblatt returned to this country and told the terrible 
story of the 300,000 war and pogrom orphans who would 
perish if American Jewry withdrew its support; of the 
400,000 refugees doomed to death by typhus and other 
plagues unless we in this country came to the rescue; of 
the spiritual and moral decadence and the parallel growth 
of anti-Semitism that would result unless the Jews of 
Europe were helped to regain their cultural status and 
given the opportunity to become again self-sustaining 
and self-respecting, Mr. Warburg was among the first 
to sign the call for the conference at which the $14,000,- 
000 appeal was launched. And he went right into the 
thick of the historic campaign.” 


Calling the campaign “a life-saving expedition,” Mr. 
Bressler epitomizes: “Those who participated in the cam- 
paign through the giving of their means or service, or 
both, have much cause to rejoice. Theirs was the golden 
opportunity in the cause of suffering humanity to have 
a share in the joy of rescue of the hundreds of thou- 
sands of men, women and children, their kin, in war- 
devastated and pogrom-ridden Eastern Europe. De- 
spite business depression and every other obstacle, they 
stood heroically and steadfastly to their task. Theirs is 
the achievement; to them belongs victory celebration. 
And let it be known and never forgotten, that in this 
wonderful outpouring of love and service to the stricken 
and suffering, many who were not of our faith partici- 
pated eagerly and generously with the Jews of New 
York. Indeed, the campaign in New York, as is un- 
doubtedly true of the campaigns in other parts of the 
country, demonstrated that in times of suffering bound- 
aries of race or creed are eliminated. In the mobiliza- 
tion of our philanthropic and social assets, no class, 
group or section, failed to answer ready to the call to 
service.” 


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